BOOKS BY H. CLAY TRUMBULL. 



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1. Ourselves and Others 

2. Aspirations and Influences. 

3. Seeing and Being. 

4. Practical Paradoxes. 



5. Character-Shaping and 

Character-Showing. 

6. Duty - Knowing and 

Duty-Doing. 



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A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 1 vol., i 2 mo. $1.00. 



JOHN D. WATTLES & CO., Philadelphia, Pa. 



A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE 



A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE 



a <£tutig in ©tf)ics 



BY 

H. CLAY TRUMBULL 




PHILADELPHIA rf & $ f $ Jf 

JOHN D. WATTLES & COMPANY 

^93 







Copyright, 1893. 

BY 

H. CLAY TRUMBULL. 



PREFACE. 



That there was need of a book on the subject 
of which this treats, will be evidenced to those 
who examine its contents. Whether this book 
meets the need, it is for those to decide who are 
its readers. 

The circumstances of its writing are recited in 
its opening chapter. I was urged to the under- 
taking by valued friends. At every step in its 
progress I have been helped by those friends, 
and others. For much of that which is valuable 
in it, they deserve credit. For its imperfections 
and lack, I alone am at fault. 

Although I make no claim to exhaustiveness 
of treatment in this work, I do claim to have 
attempted a treatment that is exceptionally com- 
prehensive and thorough. My researches have 
included extensive and varied fields of fact and 



vi PRE FA CE. 

of thought, even though very much in those 
fields has been left ungathered. What is here 
presented is at least suggestive of the abundance 
and richness of the matter available in this line. 

While not presuming to think that I have said 
the last word on this question of the ages, I do 
venture to hope that I have furnished fresh ma- 
terial for its more intelligent consideration. It 
may be that, in view of the data here presented, 
some will settle the question finally for them- 
selves — by settling it right. 

If the work tends to bring any considerable 
number to this practical issue, I shall be more 
than repaid for the labor expended on it; for I 
have a profound conviction that it is the ques- 
tion of questions in ethics, now as always. 

H. Clay Trumbull. 

Philadelphia, 

August 14, 1893. 



CONTENTS. 



A QUESTION OF THE AGES. 

Is a Lie Ever Justifiable? — Two Proffered Answers. — In- 
ducements and Temptations Influencing a Decision. — 
Incident in Army Prison Life. — Difference in Opinion. — 
Killing Enemy, or Lying to Him. — Killing, but not Lying, 
Possibility with God. — Beginning of this Discussion. — 
Its Continuance. — Origin of this Book 



II. 

ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS. 

Standards and Practices of Primitive Peoples. — Sayings and 
Doings of Hindoos. — Teachings of the Mahabharata. — 
Harischandra and Viswamitra, the Job and Satan of Hin- 
doo Passion - Play. — Scandinavian Legends. — Fridthjof 
and Ingeborg. — Persian Ideals. — Zoroastrian Heaven and 
Hell. — " Home of Song," and " Home of the Lie." — 
Truth the Main Cardinal Virtue with Egyptians. — No 
Hope for the Liar.— Ptah, " Lord of Truth."— Truth 
Fundamental to Deity. — Relatively Low Standard of 
Greeks. — Incidental Testimony of Herodotus. — Truthful- 
ness of Achilles. — Plato. — Aristotle.- — Theognis. — Pindar. 
— Tragedy of Philoctetes. — Roman Standard. — Cicero. — 

vii 



vin CONTENTS. 

Marcus Aurelius. — German Ideal. — Veracity a Primitive 
Conception. — Lie Abhorrent among Hill Tribes of 
India.— Khonds. — Sonthals. — Todas.— Bheels. — Sowrahs. 
— Tipperahs. — Arabs. — American Indians. — Patagonians. 
— Hottentots. — East Africans. — Mandingoes. — Dyaks of 
Borneo. — " Lying Heaps." — Veddahs of Ceylon. — Java- 
nese. — Lying Incident of Civilization. — Influence of 
Spirit of Barter. — " Punic Faith." — False Philosophy of 
Morals 9 



III. 
BIBLE TEACHINGS. 

Principles, not Rules, the Bible Standard. — Two Pictures of 
Paradise. — Place of Liars. — God True, though Men Lie. 
— Hebrew Midwives. — Jacob and Esau. — Rahab the 
Lying Harlot. — Samuel at Bethlehem. — Micaiah before 
Jehoshaphat andAhab. — Character and Conduct. — Abra- 
ham. — Isaac. — Jacob. — David.— Ananias and Sapphira. 
— Bible Injunctions and Warnings 33 



IV. 

DEFINITIONS. 

Importance of a Definition. — Lie Positive, and Lie Negative. 
— Speech and Act. — Element of Intention. — Conceal- 
ment Justifiable, and Concealment Unjustifiable. — 
Witness in Court. — Concealment that is Right. — Conceal- 
ment that is Sinful. — First Duty of Fallen Man. — Brutal 
Frankness. — Indecent Exposure of Personal Opinion. — 



CONTENTS. ix 

Lie Never Tolerable as Means of Concealing. — False Leg 
or Eye. — Duty of Disclosure Conditioned on Relations 
to Others. — Deception Purposed, and Resultant Decep- 
tion. — Limits of Responsibility for Results of Action. 
— Surgeon Refusing to Leave Patient. — Father with 
Drowning Child. — Mother and Wife Choosing. — Others 
Self-Deceived concerning Us. — Facial Expression. — "A 
Blind Patch." — Broken Vase. — Closed Shutters in Mid- 
summer. — Opened Shutters. — Absent Man's Hat in 
Front Hall. — When Concealment is Proper. — When Con- 
cealment is Wrong. — Contagious Diseases. — Selling a 
Horse or Cow. — Covering Pit. — Wearing Wig. — God's 
Method with Man. — Delicate Distinction. — Truthful 
Statements Resulting in False Impressions. — Concealing 
Family Trouble. — Physician and Inquiring Patient. — 
Illustrations Explain Principle, not Define it 47 



V. 



THE PLEA OF " NECESSITY." 



Quaker and Dry-goods Salesman. — Supposed Profitableness 
of Lying. — Plea for " Lies of Necessity." — Lying not 
Justifiable between Enemies in War-time. — Rightfulness 
of Concealing Movements and Plans from Enemy. — Re- 
sponsibility with Flag of Truce. — Difference between 
Scout and Spy. — Ethical Distinctions Recognized by 
Belligerents. — Illustration : Federal Prisoner Questioned 
by Confederate Captors. — Libby Prison Experiences. — 
Physicians and Patients. — Concealment not Necessarily 
Deception. — Loss of Reputation for Truthfulness by Ly- 
ing Physicians. — Loss of Power Thereby. — Impolicy of 
Lying to Insane. — Dr. Kirkbride's Testimony. — Life not 



x CONTENTS. 

Worth Saving by Lie. — Concealing One's Condition 
from Robber in Bedroom. — Questions of Would-be Mur- 
derer. — " Do Right though the Heavens Fall." — Duty to 
God not to be Counted out of Problem. — Deserting 
God's Service by Lying. — Parting Prayer 69 



VI. 

CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 

Wide Differences of Opinion. — Views of Talmudists. — Ham- 
burger's Testimony. — Strictness in Principle. — Excep- 
tions in Practice. — Isaac Abohab's Testimony. — Christian 
Fathers not Agreed. — Martyrdom Price of Truthtell- 
ing. — Justin Martyr's Testimony. — Temptations of Early 
Christians. — Words of Shepherd of Hermas. — Tertul- 
lian's Estimate. — Origen on False Speaking. — Peter and 
Paul at Antioch. — Gregory of Nyssa and Basil the Great. 
— Deceit in Interests of Harmony. — Chrysostom's Decep- 
tion of Basil. — Chrysostom's Defense of Deceit. — Augus- 
tine's Firmness of Position. — Condemnation of Lying. — 
Examination of Excuses. — Jerome's Weakness and Error. 
— Final Agreement with Augustine. — Repetition of Argu- 
ments of Augustine and Chrysostom. — Representative 
Disputants. — Thomas Aquinas. — Masterly Discussion. — 
Errors of Duns Scotus. — John Calvin. — Martin Luther. — 
Ignatius Loyola. — Position of Jesuits. — Protestants De- 
fending Lying. — Jeremy Taylor. — Errors and Incon- 
sistencies. — Wrong Definitions. — Misapplication of Scrip- 
ture. — Richard Rothe. — Character, Ability, and Influence. 
— Error in Definition of Lie. — Failure to Recognize 
Love to God as Only Basis of Love to Man. — Exceptions 
in Favor of Lvin£. — Nitzsch's Claim of Wiser and Nobler 



CONTENTS. xi 

Methods than Lying in Love. — Rothe's Claim of Re- 
sponsibility of Loving Guardianship — No Countenance 
of Deception in Example of Jesus. — Prime Error of 
Rothe. — Opinions of Contemporary Critics. — Isaac Au- 
gustus Dorner. — Character and Principles. — Keen 
Definitions. — High Standards. — Clearness and Consist- 
ency. — Hans Lassen Martensen. — Logic Swayedby Feel- 
ing. — Right Premises and Wavering Reasonings. — Lofty 
Ideals. — Story of Jeanie Deans. — Correct Conclusions. 
— Influence of Personal Peculiarities on Ethical Convic- 
tions. — Contrast of Charles Hodge and James H. Thorn- 
well. — Dr. Hodge's Correct Premises and Amiable In- 
consistencies. — Truth the Substratum of Deity. — Miscon- 
ceptions of Bible Teachings. — Suggestion of Deception 
by Jesus Christ. — Error as to General Opinion of Chris- 
tians. — Dr. Hodge's Conclusions Crushed by his Prem- 
ises. — Dr. Thornwell's Thorough Treatment of Subject. 
— Right Basis. — Sound Argument. — Correct Definitions. 
— Firmness for Truth. — Newman Smyth's Manual. — Good 
Beginning and Bad Ending. — Confusion of Terms. — In- 
consistencies in Argument. — Loose Reasoning- -Danger- 
ous Teachings. — James Martineau. — Fine Moral Sense. — 
Conflict between Feeling and Conviction. — Safe Instincts. 
— Thomas Fowler. — Higher Expediency of Veracity. — 
Importance to General Good. — Leslie Stephen. — Duty 
of Veracity Result of Moral Progress. — Kant and 
Fichte. — Jacobi Misrepresented. — False Assumptions by 
Advocates of Lie of Necessity. — Enemies in Warfare not 
Justified in Lying. — Testimony of Cicero. — Macaulay on 
Lord Clive's Treachery. — Woolsey on International Law. 
— No Place for Lying in Medical Ethics. — Opinions and 
Experiences of Physicians. — Pliny's Story of Roman 
Matron. — Victor Hugo's Sister Simplice. — Words of 
Abbe Sicard. — Tact and Principle. — Legal Ethics. — 



xii CONTENTS. 

Whewell's View. — Opinion of Chief-Justice Sharswood. — 
Mistakes of Dr. Hodge. — Lord Brougham's Claim. — 
False Charge against Charles Phillips. — Chancellor Kent 
on Moral Obligations in Law and in Equity. — Clerical 
Profession Chiefly Involved. — Clergymen for and against 
Lying. — Temptation to Lies of Love. — Supreme Im- 
portance of Sound Principle. — Duty of Veracity to Lower 
Animals. — Dr. Dabney's View. — Views of Dr. Newman 
Smyth. — Duty of Truthfulness an Obligation toward God. 
- Lower Animals not Exempt from Principle of Univer- 
sal Application. — Fishing. — Hunting. — Catching Horse. 
— Professor Bowne's Psychological View. — No Place for 
Lying in God's Universe. — Small Improvement on Chry- 
sostom's Argument for Lying. — Limits of Consistency in 
Logical Plea. — God, or Satan 81 



VII. 
THE GIST OF THE MATTER. 

One All-Dividing Line. — Primal and Eternal Difference. — 
Lie Inevitably Hostile to God. — Lying Separates from 
God. — Sin per se. — Perjury Justifiable if Lying be Justifi- 
able. — Lying Defiles Liar, apart from Questions of Gain 
in Lying. — Social Evils Resultant from Lying- Confi- 
dence Essential to Society. — Lying Destructive of Con- 
fidence. — Lie Never Harmless 223 

INDEXES. 

Topical Index 231 

Scriptural Index 236 



A QUESTION OF THE AGES. 



Whether a lie is ever justifiable, is a question 
that has been in discussion, not only in all the 
Christian centuries, but ever since questions con- 
cerning human conduct were first a possibility. 
On the one hand, it has been claimed that a lie 
is by its very nature irreconcilable with the eter- 
nal principles of justice and right; and, on the 
other hand, it has been asserted that great emer- 
gencies may necessitate a departure from all ordi- 
nary rules of human conduct, and that therefore 
there may be, in an emergency, such a thing as 
the " lie of necessity." 

It is not so easy to consider fairly a question 
like this in the hour when vital personal in- 
terests pivot on the decision, as it is in a season 
of rest and safety ; yet, if in a time of extremest 



2 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

peril the unvarying duty of truthfulness shines 
clearly through an atmosphere of sore tempta- 
tion, that light may be accepted as diviner be- 
cause of its very power to penetrate clouds and 
to dispel darkness. Being forced to consider, in 
an emergency, the possible justification of the 
so-called " lie of necessity/' I was brought to a 
settlement of that question in my own mind, and 
have since been led to an honest endeavor to 
bring others to a like settlement of it. Hence 
this monograph. 

In the summer of 1863 I was a prisoner of 
war in Columbia, South Carolina. The Federal 
prisoners were confined in the common jail, under 
military guard, and with no parole binding them 
not to attempt an escape. They were subject to 
the ordinary laws of war. Their captors were 
responsible for their detention in imprisonment, 
and it was their duty to escape from captivity, 
and to return to the army of the government 
to which they owed allegiance, if they could do 
so by any right means. No obligations were 



A QUESTION OF THE AGES. 3 

on them toward their captors, save those which 
are binding at all times, even when a state of war 
suspends such social duties as are merely con- 
ventional. 

Only he who has been a prisoner of war in a 
Southern prison in midsummer, or in a Northern 
prison in the dead of winter, in time of active 
hostilities outside, can fully realize the heart- 
longings of a soldier prisoner to find release 
from his sufferings in confinement, and to be 
again at his post of duty at the front, or can 
understand how gladly such a man would find a 
way, consistent with the right, to escape, at any 
involved risk. But all can believe that plans of 
escape were in frequent discussion among the 
restless Federal prisoners in Columbia, of whom 
I was one. 

A plan proposed to me by a fellow -officer 
seemed to offer peculiar chances of success, and 
I gladly joined in it. But as its fuller details 
were considered, I found that a probable contin- 
gency would involve the telling of a lie to an 



4 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

enemy, or a failure of the whole plan. At this 
my moral sense recoiled ; and I expressed my 
unwillingness to tell a lie, even to regain my 
personal liberty or to advantage my government 
by a return to its army. This opened an earnest 
discussion of the question whether there is such 
a thing as a " lie of necessity," or a justifiable lieJ 
My friend was a pure-minded man of principle, 
ready to die for his convictions ; and he looked 
at this question w 7 ith a sincere desire to know the 
right, and to conform to it. He argued that a 
condition of war suspended ordinary social rela- 
tions between the combatants, and that the obli- 
gation of truth-speaking was one of the duties 
thus suspended. I, on the other hand, felt that 
a lie was necessarily a sin against God, and there- 
fore was never justifiable. 

My friend asked me whether I would hesitate 
to kill an enemy who was on guard over me, or 
whom I met outside, if it were essential to our 
escape. I replied that I would not hesitate to do 
so, any more than I would hesitate at it if we were 



A QUESTION OF THE AGES. 5 

over against each other in battle. In time of war 
the soldiers of both sides take the risks of a life- 
and-death struggle ; and now that we were un- 
paroled prisoners it was our duty to escape if we 
could do so, even at the risk of our lives or of the 
lives of our captors, and it was their duty to pre- 
vent our escape at a similar risk. My friend then 
asked me on what principle I could justify the 
taking of a man's life as an enemy, and yet not 
feel justified in telling him a lie in order to save 
his life and secure our liberty. How could it be 
claimed that it was more of a sin to tell a lie to 
a man who had forfeited his social rights, than 
to kill him. I confessed that I could not at that 
time see the reason for the distinction, which my 
moral sense assured me was a real one, and I 
asked time to think of it. Thus it was that I 
came first to face a question of the ages, Is a lie 
ever justifiable? under circumstances that in- 
volved more than life to me, and when I had a 
strong inducement to see the force of reasons in 
favor of a "lie of necessity.'' 



6 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

In my careful study, at that time, of the 
principles involved in this question, I came upon 
what seemed to me the conclusion of the whole 
matter. God is the author of life. He who 
gives life has the right to take it again. What 
God can do by himself, God can authorize an- 
other to do. Human governments derive their 
just powers from God. The powers that be are 
ordained of God. A human government acts 
for God in the administering of justice, even to 
the extent of taking life. If a war waged by a 
human government be righteous, the officers of 
that government take life, in the prosecution of 
the war, as God's agents. In the case then in 
question, we who were in prison as Federal offi- 
cers were representatives of our government, and 
would be justified in taking the lives of enemies 
of our government who hindered us as God's 
agents in the doing of our duty to God and to 
our government. 

On the other hand, God, who can justly take 
life, cannot lie. A lie is contrary to the very 



A QUESTION OF THE AGES. 7 

nature of God. " It is impossible for God to 
lie." l And if God cannot lie, God cannot au- 
thorize another to lie. What is unjustifiable in 
God's sight, is without a possibility of justifica- 
tion in the universe. No personal or social 
emergency can justify a lie, whatever may be its 
apparent gain, or whatever harm may seem to 
be involved in a refusal to speak it. Therefore 
we who were Federal prisoners in war-time could 
not be justified in doing what was a sin per se, 
and what God was by his very nature debarred 
from authorizing or approving. I could see no 
way of evading this conclusion, and I deter- 
minedly refused to seek release from imprison- 
ment at the cost of a sin against God. 

At this time I had no special familiarity with 
ethics as a study, and I was unacquainted with 
the prominence of the question of the "lie of 
necessity" in that realm of thought. But on my 
return from army service, with my newly awak- 
ened interest in the subject, I came to know how 

i Heb. 6 : 18. 



8 A LIE NEVER JUSTIEIABLE. 

vigorous had been its discussion, and how varied 
had been the opinions with reference to it, among 
philosophic thinkers in all the centuries ; and I 
sought to learn for myself what could be known 
concerning the principles involved in this ques- 
tion, and their practical application to the affairs 
of human life. And now, after all these years of 
study and thought, I venture to make my con- 
tribution to this phase of Christian ethics, in an 
exhibit of the facts and principles which have 
gone to confirm the conviction of my own moral 
sense, when first I was called to consider this 
question as a question. 



II. 

ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS. 



The habit of lying is more or less common 
among primitive peoples, as it is among those of 
higher cultivation ; but it is of interest to note 
that widely, even among them, the standard of 
truthfulness as a duty is recognized as the cor- 
rect standard, and lying is, in theory at least, a 
sin. The highest conception of right observable 
among primitive peoples, and not the average 
conformity to that standard in practice, is the 
true measure of right in the minds of such 
peoples. If we were to look at the practices of 
such men in times of temptation, we might be 
ready to say sweepingly with the Psalmist, in 
his impulsiveness, " I said in my haste, All men 
are liars!" 1 But if we fixed our minds on the 

1 Psa. 116 : ii. 



IO A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

loftiest conception of truthfulness as an invari- 
able duty, recognized by races of men who are 
notorious as liars, we should see how much 
easier it is to have a right standard than to con- 
form to it. 

A careful observer of the people of India, who 
was long a resident among them, 1 says : " More 
systematic, more determined, liars, than the 
people of the East, cannot, in my opinion, be 
found in the world. They often utter falsehoods 
without any apparent reason ; and even when 
truth would be an advantage, they will not tell 
it. . . . Yet, strange to say, some of their works 
and sayings represent a falsehood as almost the 
unpardonable sin. Take the following for an 
example : ' The sin of killing a Brahman is as 
great as that of killing a hundred cows ; and the 
sin of killing a hundred cows is as great as that 
of killing a woman ; the sin of killing a hundred 
women is as great as that of killing a child in 
the womb ; and the sin of killing a hundred 

1 Joseph Roberts, in his Oriental Illustrations , p. 580. 



ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS. II 

[children] in the womb is as great as that of 
telling a lie/ " 

The Mahabharata is one of the great epics of 
ancient India. It contains a history of a war be- 
tween two rival families, or peoples, and its text 
includes teachings with reference to " everything 
that it concerned a cultivated Hindoo to know." 
The heroes in this recorded war, between the 
Pandavas and the Kauravas, are in the habit of 
lying without stint; yet there is evidence that 
they recognized the sin of lying even to an enemy 
in time of war, and when a decisive advantage 
might be gained by it. At a point in the combat 
when Yudhishthira, a leader of the Pandavas, 
was in extremity in his battling with Drona, a 
leader of the Kauravas, the divine Krishna told 
Yudhishthira that, if he would tell Drona (for 
in these mythical contests the combatants were 
usually within speaking distance of each other) 
that his loved " son Aswatthanea was dead, the 
old warrior would immediately lay down his 
arms and become an easy prey." But Yudhish- 



12 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

thira " had never been known to tell a falsehood/' 
and in this instance he " utterly refused to tell a 
lie, even to secure the death of so powerful an 
enemy." 1 Although it came about that Drona 
was, as a matter of fact, defeated by treachery, 
the sin of lying, even in time of war, and to an 
enemy, is clearly brought out as a recognized 
principle of both theory and action among the 
ancient Hindoos. 

There is a famous passion-play popular in 
Southern India and Ceylon, which illustrates the 
Hindoo ideal of truthfulness at every risk or 
cost. Viswamitra, the tempter and accuser as 
represented in the Vedas, appears in the council 
of the gods, face to face with Indra. The ques- 
tion is raised by Indra, who is the most virtuous 
sovereign on earth. He asks, "What chief of 
mortals is there, who has never told a lie ? " 
Harischandra, king of Ayodiah (Oude) is named 
as such a man. Viswamitra denies it. It is 
agreed (as in the testing of Job, according to the 

1 See Wheeler's History of India, I., 321. 



ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS. 1 3 

Bible story) that Viswamitra may employ any 
means whatsoever for the inducing of Hari- 
schandra to lie, unhindered by Indra or any other 
god. If he succeeds in his effort, he shall secure 
to himself all the merit of the good deeds of 
Harischandra ; but if Harischandra cannot be in- 
duced to lie, Viswamitra must add half his merit 
to that of Harischandra. 1 

First, Viswamitra induces Harischandra to 
become the custodian of a fabulous treasure, with 
a promise to deliver it up when called for. Then 
he brings him into such a strait that he must 
give up to Viswamitra all his possessions, in- 
cluding that treasure and his kingdom, in order 
to retain his personal virtue. After this, Viswa- 
mitra demands the return by Harischandra of the 
gold which has been already surrendered, claim- 
ing that its surrender was not according to the 
contract. In this emergency Viswamitra sug- 
gests, that if Harischandra will only deny that 

1 Arichandra, the Martyr of Truth : A Tamil Drama translated 
into English by Muta Coomara Swamy ; cited in Conway's 
Demonology and Devil Lore, II., 35-43. 



1 4 A LIE NE VER JUS TIFIA BLE. 

he owes this amount to his enemy the debt shall 
at once be canceled. "Such a declaration I can 
never make," says Harischandra. " I owe thee 
the gold, and pay it I will." 

From this time forward the efforts of Viswa- 
mitra are directed to the inducing of Hari- 
schandra to say that he is not in debt to his 
adversary; but in every trial Harischandra re- 
fuses to tell a lie. His only son dies in the 
desert. He and his wife are in poverty and 
sorrow; while all the time he is told that his 
kingdom and his treasures shall be restored to 
him, if he will tell only one lie. At last his wife 
is condemned to death on a false accusation, and 
he is appointed, by the sovereign of the land 
where she and he have been sold as slaves, to be 
her executioner. She calls on him to do his 
duty, and strike off her head. Just then Viswa- 
mitra appears to him, saying: "Wicked man, 
spare her ! Tell a lie even now, and be restored 
to your former state ! " 

Harischandra's answer is : " Even though thou 



ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS. 1 5 

didst offer to me the throne of Indra, I would 
not tell a He." And to his wife, Chandravati, he 
says encouragingly : " This keen saber will do 
its duty. Thou dead, thy husband dies too — 
this selfsame sword shall pierce my breast. . . . 
Yes, let all men perish, let all gods cease to exist, 
let the stars that shine above grow dim, let all 
seas be dried up, let all mountains be leveled to 
the ground, let wars rage, blood flow in streams, 
let millions of millions of Harischandras be thus 
persecuted ; yet let truth be maintained, let truth 
ride victorious over all, let truth be the light, — 
truth alone the lasting solace of mortals and 
immortals." 

As Harischandra strikes at the neck of Chan- 
dravati, " the sword, instead of harming her, is 
transformed into a necklace of pearls, which winds 
itself around her. The gods of heaven, all sages, 
and all kings, appear suddenly to the view of 
Harischandra," and Siva, the first of the gods, 
commends him for his fidelity to truth, and tells 
him that his dead son shall be brought again to 



1 6 A LIE NEVER J US TIE/ABLE. 

life, and his kingdom and treasures and honors 
shall be restored to him. And thus the story of 
Harischandra stands as a rebuke to the Chris- 
tian philosopher who could suppose that God, 
or the gods, would co-work with a man who 
acted on the supposition that there is such an 
anomaly in the universe as "a lie of necessity." 

' The old Scandinavian heroes were valiant in 
war, but they held that a lie was not justifiable 
under any pressure of an emergency. Their 
Valhalla heaven was the home of those who had 
fought bravely ; but there was no place for liars 
in it. A fine illustration of their conception of 
the unvarying duty of truthfulness is given in the 
saga of Fridthjof. Fridthjof, heroic son of Thor- 
stein, loved Ingeborg, daughter of his father's 
friend, King Bele. Ingeborg's brother Helge, 
successor to his father's throne, opposed the 
match, and shut her up within the sacred enclo- 
sure of the god Balder. Fridthjof ventured 
within the forbidden ground, in order to pledge 
to her his manly troth. The lovers were pure 



ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS. 1 7 

in purpose and in act, but, if their interview 
were known, they would both be permanently 
harmed in reputation and in standing. A rumor 
of their secret meeting was circulated, and Fridth- 
jof was summoned before the council of heroes 
to answer to the charge. If ever a lie were justi- 
fiable, it would seem to be when a pure woman's 
honor was at stake, and when a hero's happiness 
and power for good pivoted on it. Fridthjof 
tells to Ingeborg the story of his sore tempta- 
tion when, in the presence of the council, Helge 
challenges his course. 

" ' Say, Fridthjof, Balder' s peace hast thou not broken, 
Not seen my sister in his house while Day 
Concealed himself, abashed, before your meeting ? 
Speak ! yea or nay ! ' Then echoed from the ring 
Of crowded warriors, ' Say but nay, say nay ! 
Thy simple word we'll trust ; we'll court for thee, — 
Thou, Thorstein's son, art good as any king's. 
Say nay ! say nay ! and thine is Ingeborg ! * 
'The happiness,' I answered, ' of my life 
On one word hangs ; but fear not therefore, Helge ! 
I would not lie to gain the joys of Valhal, 
Much less this earth's delights. I've seen thy sister, 
Have spoken with her in the temple's night, 

2 



1 8 A LIE NE VER JUS TIE I A BLE. 

But have not therefore broken Balder's peace !' 
More none would hear. A murmur of deep horror 
The diet traversed ; they who nearest stood 
Drew back, as I had with the plague been smitten." l 

And so, because Fridthjof would not lie, he lost 
his bride and became a wanderer from his land, 
and Ingeborg became the wife of another ; and 
this record is to this day told to the honor of 
Fridthjof, in accordance with the standard of the 
North in the matter of truth-telling. 

In ancient Persia, the same high standard pre- 
vailed. Herodotus says of the Persians : " The 
most disgraceful thing in the world, they think, 
is to tell a lie ; the next worse, to owe a debt ; 
because, among other reasons, the debtor is 
obliged to tell lies." 2 " Their sons are carefully 
instructed, from their fifth to their twentieth year, 
in three things alone, — to ride, to draw the bow, 
and to speak the truth." 3 Here the one duty in 
the realm of morals is truth-telling. In the famous 
inscription of Darius, the son of Hystaspes, on 

1 Anderson's Viking Tales of the North, p. 223. 
2 Rawlinson's Herodotus, Bk. I., g 139. 3 Ibid., Bk. I., g 136. 



ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS. 1 9 

the Rock of Behistun, 1 there are repeated refer- 
ences to lying as the chief of sins, and to the evil 
time when lying was introduced into Persia, and 
" the lie grew in the provinces, in Persia as well 
as in Media and in the other provinces." Darius 
claims to have had the help of "Ormuzd and the 
other gods that may exist," because he "was not 
wicked, nor a liar;" and he enjoins it on his 
successor to " punish severely him who is a liar 
or a rebel." 

The Zoroastrian designation of heaven was 
the " Home of Song ; " while hell was known as 
the u Home of the Lie." 2 There was in the 
Zoroastrian thought only two rival principles in 
the universe, represented by Ormuzd and Ahri- 
man, as the God of truth, and the father of lies ; 
and the lie was ever and always an offspring of 
Ahriman, the evil principle : it could not emanate 
from or be consistent with the God of truth. The 
same idea was manifest in the designation of the 

1 Sayce's Introduction to Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, pp. 120- 

137. 

2 Miiller's Sacred Books of the East, XXXI., 184. 



20 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

subordinate divinities of the Zoroastrian religion. 
Mithra was the god of light, and as there is no 
concealment in the light, Mithra was also god of 
truth. A liar was the enemy of righteousness. 1 
" Truth was the main cardinal virtue among 
the Egyptians," and " falsehood was considered 
disgraceful among them." 2 Ra and Ma were 
symbols of Light and Truth ; and their represen- 
tation was worn on the breastplate of priest and 
judge, like the Urim and Thummim of the He- 
brews. 3 When the soul appeared in the Hall of 
Two Truths, for final judgment, it must be able 
to say, " I have not told a falsehood," or fail of 
acquittal. 4 Ptah, the creator, a chief god of the 
Egyptians, was called " Lord of Truth." 5 The 
Egyptian conception of Deity was : " God is the 
truth, he lives by truth, he lives upon the truth, 

1 Miiller's Sacred Books of the East, XXIII., 119 f, 124 f., 128, 
139. See reference to Jackson's paper on " the ancient Persians' 
abhorrence of falsehood, illustrated from the Avesta," \n Journal 
of Am. Oriental Soc, Vol. XIII., p. cii. 

2 Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptia?is, I., 299; III., 183-185. 

3 Exod. 39 : 8-21; Lev. 8 : 8. 

4 Bunsen's Egypt ' s Place in Universal History, V., 254. 

5 Wilkinson's Anc, Egyp., III., 15-17. 



ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS. 21 

he is the king of truth." 1 , The Egyptians, like 
the Zoroastrians, seemed to count the one all- 
dividing line in the universe the line between 
truth and falsehood, between light and darkness. 
Among the ancient Greeks the practice of 
lying was very general, so general that writers 
on the social life of the Greeks have been ac- 
customed to give a low place relatively to that 
people in its estimate of truthfulness as a virtue. 
Professor Mahaffy says on this point: "At no 
period did the nation ever attain that high 
standard which is the great feature in Germanic 
civilization. Even the Romans, with all their 
coarseness, stood higher in this respect. But 
neither in Iliad nor in Odyssey is there, except 
in phrases, any reprobation of deceit as such." 
He points to the testimony of Cicero, concerning 
the Greeks, who "concedes to them all the high 
qualities they choose to claim save one — that 
of truthfulness." 2 

1 Budge's The Dwellers on the Nile, p. 131. 
2 Mahaffy's Social Life in Greece, pp.27, 123. See also Fowler's 
Principles of Morals, II., 219-221. 



22 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

Yet the very way in which Herodotus tells to 
the credit of the Persians that they allowed no 
place for the lie in their ethics 1 seems to indicate 
his apprehension of a higher standard of veracity 
than that which was generally observed among 
his own people. Moreover, in the Iliad, Achilles 
is represented as saying: " Him I hate as I do 
the gates of Hades, who hides one thing in his 
heart and utters another ; " and it is the straight- 
forward Achilles, rather than "the wily and shift- 
ful Ulysses," who is the admired hero of the 
Greeks. 2 Plato asserts, and argues in proof of 
his assertion, that " the veritable lie . . . is hated 
by all gods and men." He includes in the term 
"veritable lie," or " genuine lie," a lie in the soul 
as back of the spoken lie, and he is sure that 
" the divine nature is incapable of a lie," and that 
in proportion as the soul of a man is conformed 
to the divine image, the man " will speak, act, and 

i Hist., Bk. I., I 139. 
2 Professor Fowler seems to be quite forgetful of this fact. He 
speaks of Ulysses as if he had precedence of Achilles in the 
esteem of the Greeks. See his Principles of Morals, II., 219. 



ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS. 23 

live in accordance with the truth." 1 Aristotle, 
also, while recognizing different degrees of 
veracity, insists that the man who is in his soul 
a lover of truth will be truthful even when he is 
tempted to swerve from the truth. " For the 
lover of truth, who is truthful where nothing is 
at stake [or where it makes no difference], will 
yet more surely be truthful where there is a stake 
[or where it does make a difference] ; for he 
will [then] shun the lie as shameful, since he 
shuns it simply because it is a lie." 2 And, again, 
" Falsehood abstractly is bad and blamable, and 
truth honorable and praiseworthy; and thus the 
truthful man being in the mean is praiseworthy, 
while the false [in either extreme, of overstating 
or of understating] are both blamable, but the 
exaggerating man more so than the other." 3 

Theognis recognizes this high ideal of the 
duty and the beauty of truthfulness, when he 
says : " At first there is a small attractiveness 

1 Plato's Republic, II., 382, a, b. 
2 Aristotle's Eth. Nic, IV., 13, 1127, a, b. 

3 Ibid., IV. 



24 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

about a lie, but in the end the gain it brings is 
both shameful and harmful. That man has no 
fair glory, in whose heart dwells a lie, and from 
whose mouth it has once issued." 1 

Pindar looks toward the same standard when 
he says to Hiero, " Forge thy tongue on the anvil 
of truth ; " 2 and when he declares emphatically, 
" I will not stain speech with a lie." 3 So, again, 
when his appeal to a divinity is : "Thou that art 
the beginning of lofty virtue, Lady Truth, forbid 
thou that my poem [or composition] should stum- 
ble against a lie, harsh rock of offense." 4 In 
his tragedy of the Philoctetes, Sophocles makes 
the whole play pivot on the remorse of Neop- 
tolemus, son of Achilles, over his having lied to 
Philoctetes (who is for the time being an enemy 
of the Greeks), in order to secure through him 
the killing of Paris and the overthrow of Troy. 
The lie was told at the instigation of Ulysses; but 
Neoptolemus repents its utterance, and refuses to 

1 Theognis, 607. 2 Pythian Ode, 1, 86. 

3 Olympian Ode, 4, 16. 4 Bergk's Pindar, 183 [221]. 



ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS. 2$ 

take advantage of it, even though the fate of Troy 
and the triumph of Greek arms depend on the 
issue. The plain teaching of the tragedy is that 
" the purposes of heaven are not to be served by 
a lie; and that the simplicity of the young son 
of truth-loving Achilles is better in the sight of 
heaven, even when it seems to lead to failure, 
than all the cleverness of guileful Ulysses." 1 

It is admitted on all hands that the Romans 
and the Germans had a high ideal as to the duty 
of truthfulness and the sin of lying. 2 And so it 

1 Professor Lamberton. 

2 See Fowler's Principles of Morals, II., 220; also Mahaffy's 
Social Life in Greece, p. 27. Note, for instance, the high standard 
as to truthfulness indicated by Cicero, in his " Offices," III., 12-17, 
32. " Pretense and dissimulation ought to be banished from the 
whole of life." " Reason . . . requires that nothing be done insidi- 
ously, nothing dissemblingly, nothing falsely." Note, also, Juvenal, 
Satire XIII., as to the sin of a lie purposed, even if not spoken ; 
and Marcus Aurelius in his "Thoughts," Book IX. : " He . . . who 
lies is guilty of impiety to the same [highest] divinity." " He, 
then, who lies intentionally is guilty of impiety, inasmuch as he 
acts unjustly by deceiving ; and he also who lies unintentionally, 
inasmuch as he is at variance with the universal nature, and inas- 
much as he disturbs the order by fighting against the nature of the 
world ; for he fights against it, who is moved of himself to that 
which is contrary to truth, for he had received powers from nature 
through the neglect of which he is not able now to distinguish 
falsehood from truth." 



26 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

was in fact with all peoples which had any con- 
siderable measure of civilization in former ages. 

It is a noteworthy fact that the duty of veracity 
is often more prominent among primitive peoples 
than among the more civilized, and that, cor- 
respondingly, lying is abhorred as a vice, or 
seems to be unknown as an expedient in social 
intercourse. This is not always admitted in the 
theories of writers on morals, but it would seem 
to be borne out by an examination into the facts 
of the case. Lecky, in his study of " the natural 
history of morals," 1 claims that veracity " usually 
increases with civilization," and he seeks to show 
why it is so. But this view of Lecky's is an 
unfounded assumption, in support of which he 
proffers no evidence; while Herbert Spencer's 
exhibit of facts, in his " Cyclopaedia of Descrip- 
tive Sociology," seems to disprove the claim of 
Lecky; and he directly asserts that " surviving 
remnants of some primitive races in India have 
natures in which truthfulness seems to be or- 

1 History of European Morals, I., 143. 



ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS. 27 

ganic; " that " not only to the surrounding Hin- 
doos, higher intellectually and relatively advanced 
in culture, are they in this respect far superior, 
but they are superior to Europeans." l 

Among those Hill Tribes of India which have 
been most secluded, and which have retained the 
largest measure of primitive life and customs, 
fidelity to truth in speech and act is still the 
standard, and a lie is abhorrent to the normal 
instincts of the race. Of the Khonds of Central 
India it is said that they, " in common with 
many other wild races, bear a singular character 
for truthfulness and honesty;" 2 and that espe- 
cially "the aborigine is the most truthful of be- 
ings." 3 " The Khonds believe that truthfulness 
is one of the most sacred of duties imposed by 
the gods." 4 "They are men of one word." 5 
"The truth is by a Sonthal held sacred." 6 The 

1 See Spencer's Principles of Sociology, II., 234 ff. ; also his 
Inductions of Ethics, p. 405 f. 

2 Glasfurd, cited in Cycl. of Descrip. Sociol., V., 32. 
3 Forsyth, ibid. 4 Macpherson, cited in ibid. 

5 Ibid. 6 Sherwill, cited in ibid. 



28 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

Todas "call falsehood one of the worst of vices." x 
Although it is said by one traveler that the 
Todas "practice dissimulation toward Europeans, 
yet he recognizes this as a trait consequent on 
their intercourse with Europeans." 2 The Bheels, 
which were said to be " a race of unmitigated 
savages, without any sense of natural religion." 3 
and " which have preserved their rude habits and 
manners to the present day," are "yet imbued 
with a sense of truth and honor strangely at con- 
trast with their external character." 4 Bishop 
Heber says that " their word is more to be de- 
pended on than that of their conquerors." 5 Of 
the Sowrahs it is said : " A pleasing feature in their 
character is their complete truthfulness. They 
do not know how to tell a lie." 6 Indeed, as Mr. 
Spencer sums up the case on this point, there 
are Hill Tribes in India " originally distinguished 
by their veracity, but who are rendered less 

1 Harkness, cited in Cycl. of Descrip. Socio/. , V., 31. 

2 Spencer's Principles of Sociology, II., 234. 

3 Marshman, cited in Cycl. of Descrip. Sociol., V., 31. 

4 Wheeler, cited in ibid. 5 Cited in ibid. 6 Shortt, cited in ibid. 



ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS. 29 

veracious by contact with the whites. "So rare 
is lying among these aboriginal races when un- 
vitiated by the ' civilized,' that of those in Bengal, 
Hunter singles out the Tipperahs as 'the only 
Hill Tribe in which this vice is met with.' " l 

The Arabs are more truthful in their more 
primitive state than where they are influenced 
by " civilization," or by dealings with those from 
civilized communities. 2 And the same would 
seem to be true of the American Indians. 3 Of 
the Patagonians it is said: "A lie with them is 
held in detestation." 4 "The word of a Hotten- 
tot is sacred ; " and the good quality of " a rigid 
adherence to truth," "he is master of in an emi- 
nent degree." 5 Dr. Livingstone says that lying 
was known to be a sin by the East Africans 
" before they knew aught of Europeans or their 
teaching." 6 And Mungo Park says of the 

1 Spencer's Principles of Sociology, II., 234 ff. 

2 Denham, and Palgrave, cited in Cycl. of Des. Sociol., V., 30,31. 

3 See Morgan's League of the Iroquois, p. 335 ; also Schoolcraft, 
and Keating, on the Chippewas, cited in Cycl. of Descrip. Sociol. , 
VI., 30. 4 Snow, cited in ibid. 

5 Kolben,and Barrow, cited in Cycl. of Descrip. Sociol., IV., 25. 
6 Cycl. of Descrip. Sociol., IV., 26. 



30 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

Mandingoes, among the inland Africans, that, 
while they seem to be thieves by nature, " one 
of the first lessons in which the Mandingo women 
instruct their children is the practice of truth? 
The only consolation of a mother whose son had 
been murdered, " was the reflection that the poor 
boy, in the course of his blameless life, had never 
told a lie!' l Richard Burton is alone among* 
modern travelers in considering lying natural 
to all primitive or savage peoples. Carl Bock, 
like other travelers, testifies to the unvarying 
truthfulness of the Dyaks in Borneo, 2 and an- 
other observant traveler tells of the disgrace that 
attaches to a lie in that land, as shown by the 
" lying heaps " of sticks or stones along the road- 
side here and there. " Each heap is in remem- 
brance of some man who has told a stupendous 
lie, or failed in carrying out an engagement ; and 
every passer-by takes a stick or a stone to add 
to the accumulation, saying at the time he does 

1 Cycl. of Descrlp. Socio/., IV., 27. 
2 Head Hunters of Borneo, p. 209. See also Boyle, cited in 
Spencer's Cycl. of Descrlp. Socio/., III., 35. 



ETHNIC CONCEPTIONS. 3 1 

it, ' For So-and-so's lying heap/ It goes on for 
generations, until they sometimes forget who it 
was that told the lie, but, notwithstanding that, 
they continue throwing the stones." 1 What a 
blocking of the paths of civilization there would 
be if a " lying heap" were piled up wherever a 
lie had been told, or a promise had been broken, 
by a child of civilization ! 

The Veddahs of Ceylon, one of the most 
primitive of peoples, "are proverbially truthful." 2 
The natives of Java are peculiarly free from the 
vice of lying, except in those districts which have 
had most intercourse with Europeans. 3 

It is found, in fact, that in all the ages, the 
world over, primitive man's highest ideal con- 
ception of deity has been that of a God who 
could not tolerate a lie ; and his loftiest standard 
of human action has included the readiness to 
refuse to tell a lie under any inducement, or in 
any peril, whether it be to a friend or to an 

1 St. John's Life in the Forests of the Far East, I., 88 f. 

2 Bailey, cited in Spencer's Cycl. of Descrip. Socio/., III., 32. 

3 Earl, and Raffles, cited in ibid., p. 35. 



32 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

enemy. This is the teaching of ethnic concep- 
tions on the subject. The lie would seem to be 
a product of civilization, or an outgrowth of the 
spirit of trade and barter, rather than a natural 
impulse of primitive man. It appeared in full 
flower and fruitage in olden time among the 
commercial Phoenicians, so prominently that 
" Punic faith" became a synonym of falsehood 
in social dealings. 

Yet it is in the face of facts like these that 
a writer like Professor Fowler baldly claims, 
in support of the same presupposed theory 
as that of Lecky, that " it is probably owing 
mainly to the development of commerce, and to 
the consequent necessity, in many cases, of ab- 
solute truthfulness, that veracity has come to 
take the prominent position which it now occu- 
pies among the virtues ; though the keen sense 
of honor, engendered by chivalry, may have had 
something to do in bringing about the same 
result." l 

1 Principles of Morality, II., 220. 



III. 

BIBLE TEACHINGS. 



In looking at the Bible for light in such an 

investigation as this, it is important to bear in 

mind that the Bible is not a collection of specific 

rules of conduct, but rather a book of principles 

illustrated in historic facts, and in precepts based 

on those principles, — announced or presupposed. 

The question, therefore, is not, Does the Bible 

authoritatively draw a line separating the truth 

from a lie, and making the truth to be always 

right, and a lie to be always wrong ? but it is, 

Does the Bible evidently recognize an unvarying 

and ever-existing distinction between a truth and 

a lie, and does the whole sweep of its teachings 

go to show that in God's sight a lie, as by its 

nature opposed to the truth and the right, is 

always wrong ? 

3 33 



34 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

The Bible opens with a picture of the first pair 
in Paradise, to whom God tells the simple truth, 
and to whom the enemy of man tells a lie ; and 
it shows the ruin of mankind wrought by that 
lie, and the author of the lie punished because of 
its telling. 1 The Bible closes with a picture of 
Paradise, into which are gathered the lovers and 
doers of truth, and from which is excluded 
" every one that loveth and doeth a lie ; " 2 while 
" all liars " are to have their part " in the lake 
that burneth with fire and brimstone ; which is 
the second death." 3 In the Old Testament and 
in the New, God is represented as himself the 
Truth, to whom, by his very nature, the doing or 
the speaking of a lie is impossible, 4 while Satan 
is represented as a liar and as the " father of 
lies." 5 

While the human servants of God, as repre- 
sented in the Bible narrative, are in many in- 

1 Gen. 2, 3. 2 Rev. 22. 3 Rev. 21 : 5-8. 

4 Psa. 31:5; 146 : 6 ; John 14 : 6 ; Num. 23 : 19 ; 1 Sam. 15 : 29 ; 
Titus 1:2; Heb. 6:18; 1 John 5:7. 5 John 8 : 44. 



BIBLE TEACHINGS, 35 

stances guilty of lying, their lies are clearly con- 
trary to the great principle, in the light of which 
the Bible itself is written, that a lie is always 
wrong, and that it cannot have justification in 
God's sight. The idea of the Bible record is 
that God is true, though every man were a liar. 1 
God is uniformly represented as opposed to lies 
and to liars, and a lie in his sight is spoken of 
as a lie unto him, or as a lie against him. In 
the few cases where the Bible narrative has been 
thought by some to indicate an approval by the 
Lord of a lie, that was told, as it were, in his in- 
terest, an examination of the facts will show that 
they offer no exception to the rule that, by the 
Bible standard, a lie is never justifiable. 

Take, for example, the case of the Hebrew 
midwives, who lied to the officials of Pharaoh, 
when they were commanded to kill every Hebrew 
male child ; 2 and of whom it is said that " God 
dealt well with the midwives; . . . and . . . be- 
cause the midwives feared God, ... he made 

1 Rom. 3:4. 2 Exod. 1 : 15-19. 



36 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

them houses." 1 Here it is plain that God com- 
mended their fear of him, not their lying in 
behalf of his people, and that it was " because 
the midwives feared God" not because they lied, 
"that he made them houses." It was their 
choice of the Lord above the gods and rulers of 
Egypt that won them the approval of the Lord, 
even though they were sinners in being liars ; as 
in an earlier day it was the approval of Jacob's 
high estimate of the birthright, and not the 
deceits practiced by him on Esau and his father 
Isaac, that the Lord showed in confirming a bless- 
ing to Jacob. 2 

So, also, in the narrative of Rahab, the 
Canaanitish young woman, who concealed the 
Israelitish spies sent into her land by Joshua, 
and lied about them to her countrymen, and 
who was commended by the Lord for her faith 
in this transaction. 3 Rahab was a harlot by 
profession and a liar by practice. When the 

1 Exod. i : 20, 21. 2 Gen. 25 : 27-34; 27 : 1-40; 28 : 1-22. 

3 Josh. 2 : 1-21. 



BIBLE TEACHINGS. 37 

Hebrew spies entered Jericho, they went to her 
house as a place of common resort. Rahab, on 
learning who they were, expressed her readiness, 
sinner as she was, to trust the God of Israel 
rather than the gods of Canaan ; and because of 
her trust she put herself, with all her heathen 
habits of mind and conduct, at the disposal of 
the God of Israel, and she lied, as she had been 
accustomed to lie, to her own people, as a means 
of securing safety to her Hebrew visitors. Be- 
cause of her faith, which was shown in this way, 
but not necessarily because of her way of show- 
ing her faith, the Lord approved of her spirit in 
choosing his service rather than the service of the 
gods of her people. The record of her approval 
is, "By faith Rahab the harlot perished not with 
them that were disobedient, having received the 
spies with peace." * 

It would be quite as fair to claim that God 
approved of Rahab's harlotry, in this case, as to 
claim that he approved of her lying. Rahab 

1 Heb. ii : 31. 



38 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

was a harlot and a liar, and she was ready to 
practice in both these lines in the service of the 
spies. She was not to be commended for either 
of those vices; but she was to be commended in 
that, with all her vices, she was yet ready to give 
herself just as she was, and with her ways as 
they were, to Jehovah's side, in the crisis hour 
of conflict between him and the gods of her 
people. It was the faith that prompted her to 
this decision that God commended ; and " by 
faith " she was preserved from destruction when 
her people perished. 

Another case that has been thought to imply 
a divine approval of an untrue statement, is that 
of Samuel, when he went to Bethlehem to anoint 
David as Saul's successor on the throne of Israel, 
and, at the Lord's command, said he had come 
to offer a sacrifice to God. 1 But here clearly the 
narrative shows no lie, nor false statement, made 
or approved. Samuel, as judge and prophet, was 
God's representative in Israel. He was accus- 

1 1 Sam. 16 : 1-3. 



BIBLE TEACHINGS. 39 

tomed to go from place to place in the line of his 
official ministry, including the offering at times 
of sacrifices of communion. 1 When, on this oc- 
casion, the Lord told Samuel of his purpose of 
designating a son of Jesse to succeed Saul on 
the throne, and desired him to go to Bethlehem 
for further instructions, Samuel was unnecessarily 
alarmed, and said, in his fear, " How can I go ? 
if Saul hear it, he will kill me." The Lord's 
simple answer was, " Take an heifer with thee, 
and say, I am come to sacrifice to the Lord. 
And call Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will shew 
thee what thou shalt do : and thou shalt anoint 
unto me him whom I name unto thee." 

In other words, the Lord said to Samuel, I want 
you to go to Bethlehem as my representative, 
and offer a sacrifice there. Say this fearlessly. 
In due time I will give you other directions ; but 
do not borrow trouble on account of them. Do 
your duty step by step. Speak out the plain 
truth as to all that the authorities of Bethlehem 

1 1 Sam. 7 : 15-17 ; 9 : 22-24 I lx '• I 4» I 5 ; 2 ° : 2 9- 



40 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

have any right to know ; and do not fear any 
harm through my subsequent private revelations 
to you. In these directions of the Lord there is 
no countenance of the slightest swerving from 
the truth by Samuel ; nor is there an authorized 
concealment of any fact that those to whom 
Samuel was sent had any claim to know. 

Still another Bible incident that has been a 
cause of confusion to those who did not see how 
God could approve lying, and a cause of rejoic- 
ing to those w r ho wanted to find evidence of his 
justification of that practice, is the story of the 
prophet Micaiah, saying before Jehoshaphat and 
Ahab that the Lord had put a lying spirit into 
the mouths of all the false prophets who were at 
that time before those kings. 1 Herbert Spencer 
actually cites this incident as an illustration of the 
example set before the people of Israel, by their 
God, of lying as a means of accomplishing a de- 
sired end. 2 But just look at the story as it stands ! 

1 1 Kings 22 : 1-23 ; 2 Chron. 18 : 1-34. 
2 The Inductions of Ethics, p. 158. 



BIBLE TEACHINGS. 4 1 

Four hundred of Ahab's prophets were ready 
to tell him that a campaign which he wanted to 
enter upon would be successful. Micaiah, an 
honest prophet of the Lord, was sent for at 
Jehoshaphat's request, and was urged by the 
messenger to prophesy to the same effect as 
Ahab's prophets. Micaiah replied that he should 
give the Lord's message, whether it was agreeable 
or not to Ahab. He came, and at first he spoke 
satirically as if he agreed with the other prophets 
in deeming the campaign a hopeful one. It was 
as though he said to the king, You want me to aid 
you in your plans, not to give you counsel from 
the Lord ; therefore I will say, as your prophets 
have said, Go ahead, and have success. It was 
evident, however, to Ahab, that the prophet's 
words were not to be taken literally, but were a 
rebuke to him in Oriental style, and therefore he 
told the prophet to give him the Lord's message 
plainly. Then the prophet gave a parable, or a 
message in Oriental guise, showing that these 
four hundred prophets of Ahab were speaking 



42 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

falsely, as if inspired by a lying spirit, and that, 
if Ahab followed their counsel, he would go to 
his ruin. 

To cite this parable as a proof of Jehovah's 
commendation of lying is an absurdity. Jeho- 
vah's prophet Micaiah was there before the king, 
telling the simple truth to the king. And, in order 
to meet effectively the claim of the false prophets 
that they were inspired, he related, as it were, a 
vision, or a parable, in which he declared that he 
had seen preparations making in heaven for their 
inspiring by a lying spirit. This was, as every 
Oriental would understand it, a parliamentary 
way of calling the four hundred prophets a pack 
of liars ; and the event proved that all of them 
were liars, and that Micaiah alone, as Jehovah's 
prophet, was a truth-teller. What folly could be 
greater than the attempt to count this public 
charge against the lying prophets as an item of 
evidence in proof of the Lord's responsibility 
for their lying — which the Lord's prophet took 
this method of exposing and rebuking ! 



BIBLE TEACHINGS. 43 

There are, indeed, various instances in the 
Bible story of lies told by men who were in favor 
with God, where there is no ground for claiming 
that those lies had approval with God. The men 
of the Bible story are shown as men, with the 
sins and follies and weaknesses of men. Their 
conduct is to be judged by the principles enun- 
ciated in the Bible, and their character is to be 
estimated by the relation which they sustained 
toward God in spite of their human infirmities. 

Abraham is called the father of the faithful, 1 
and he was known as the friend of God. 2 But he 
indulged in the vice of concubinage, 3 in accord- 
ance with the loose morals of his day and of his 
surroundings ; and when he was down in Egypt 
he lied through his distrust of God, apparently 
thinking that there was such a thing as a " lie of 
necessity," and he brought upon himself the 
rebuke of an Egyptian king because of his lying. 4 
But it would be folly to claim that God approved 

1 Josh. 24 : 3 ; Isa. 51:2; Matt. 3:9; Rom. 4:12; Gal. 3 : 9. 

2 2 Chron. 20 : 7 ; Isa. 41 : 8 ; Jas. 2 : 23. 
3 Gen. 16 : 1-6. 4 Gen. 12 : 10-19. 



44 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

of concubinage or of lying, because a man whom 
he was saving was guilty of either of these vices. 
Isaac also lied, 1 and so did Jacob ; 2 but it was not 
because of their lies that these men had favor with 
God. David was a man after God's own heart 3 in 
his fidelity of spirit to God as the only true God, 
in contrast with the gods of the nations round 
about Israel ; but David lied, 4 as David committed 
adultery. 5 It would hardly be claimed, however, 
that either his adultery or his lying in itself made 
David a man after God's own heart. So all along 
the Bible narrative, down to the time when Ana- 
nias and Sapphira, prominent among the early 
Christians, lied unto God concerning their very 
gifts into his treasury, and were struck dead as a 
rebuke of their lying. 6 

The whole sweep of Bible teaching is opposed 
to lying ; and the specific injunctions against that 
sin, as well as the calls to the duty of truth- 
speaking, are illustrative of that sweep. " Ye 

1 Gen. 26 : 6-10. 2 Gen. 27 : 6-29. 

3 1 Som. 13 : 14 ; Acts 13 : 22. 4 1 Sam. 21 : 1, 2. 

5 2 Sam. 11 : 1-27. 6 Acts 5 : 1-11. 



BIBLE TEACHINGS. 45 

shall not steal ; neither shall ye deal falsely, nor 
lie one to another," l says the Lord, in holding 
up the right standard before his children. "A 
lying tongue " is said to be " an abomination " 
before the Lord. 2 "A faithful witness will not 
lie : but a false witness breatheth out lies," 3 says 
Solomon, in marking the one all-dividing line of 
character ; and as to the results of lying he says, 
" He that breatheth out lies shall not escape," 4 
and " he that breatheth out lies shall perish." 5 
And he adds the conclusion of wisdom, in view 
of the supposed profit of lying, "A poor man is 
better than a liar;" 6 that is, a truth-telling poor 
man is better than a rich liar. 

The inspired Psalms are full of such teachings : 
" The wicked are estranged from the womb : 
they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking 
lies." 7 "They delight in lies." 8 "The mouth 
of them that speak lies shall be stopped." 9 " He 
that speaketh falsehood shall not be established 

1 Lev. 19 : 11. 2 Prov. 6 : 16, 17. 3 Prov. 14 : 5. 
4 Prov. 19 : 5. 5 Prov. 19 : 9. 6 Prcv. 19 : 22. 
* Psa. 58 : 3. 8 Psa. 62 : 4. 9 Psa. 63 : 11. 



46 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

before mine [the Psalmist's] eyes." 1 And the 
Psalmist prays, " Deliver my soul, O Lord, from 
lying lips." 2 In the New Testament it is much 
the same as in the Old. " Lie not one to an- 
other ; seeing that ye have put off the old man 
with his doings," 3 is the apostolic injunction; 
and again, " Speak ye truth each one with his 
neighbor: for we are members one of another." 4 
There is no place for a lie in Bible ethics, under 
the earlier dispensation or the later. 

1 Psa. 101 : 7. 2 Psa. 120 : 2. 

3 Col. 3:9. * Eph. 4 : 25. 



IV. 

DEFINITIONS. 



It would seem to be clear that the Bible, and 
also the other sacred books of the world, and the 
best moral sense of mankind everywhere, are 
united in deeming a lie incompatible with the 
idea of a holy God, and consistent only with the 
spirit of man's arch-enemy — the embodiment of 
all evil. Therefore he who, admitting this, would 
find a place in God's providential plan for a " lie 
of necessity'' must begin with claiming that there 
are lies which are not lies. Hence it is of prime 
importance to define a lie clearly, and to dis- 
tinguish it from allowable, and proper conceal- 
ments of truth. 

A lie, in its stricter sense, is the affirming, by 
word or by action, of that which is not true, with 
a purpose of deceiving; or the denying, by word 

47 



48 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

or by action, of that which is true, with a purpose 
of deceiving. But the suppressing or concealing 
of essential facts, from one who is entitled to know 
them, with a purpose of deceiving, may practi- 
cally amount to a lie. 

Obviously a lie may be by act, as really as 
by word; as when a man is asked to tell the 
right road, and he silently points in the wrong 
direction. Obviously, also, the intention or pur- 
pose of deceiving is in the essence of the lie; for 
if a man says that which is not true, supposing 
it to be true, he makes a misstatement, but he 
does not lie; or, again, if he speaks an untruth 
playfully where no deception is wrought or in- 
tended, as by saying, when the mercury is below 
zero, that it is "good summer weather," there is 
no lie in the patent untruth. 

So far all are likely to be agreed ; but when it 
comes to the question of that concealment which 
is in the realm of the lie, as distinct from right 
and proper concealment, there is more difficulty 
in making the lines of distinction clear to all 



DEFINITIONS. 49 

minds. Yet those lines can be defined, and it is 
important that they should be. 

A witness on the stand in a court of law is 
bound by his oath, or his affirmation, to tell "the 
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
truth," in the testimony that he gives in response 
to the questions asked of him. If, therefore, in 
the course of his testimony, he declares that he 
received five dollars for his share in a certain 
transaction, when in reality he received five hun- 
dred dollars, his concealment of the fact that he 
received a hundred times as much as he admits 
having received, is practically a lie, and is culpa- 
ble as such. Any intentional concealment of 
essential facts in the matter at issue, in his an- 
swers to questions asked of him as a witness, is 
a lie in essence. 

But a person who is not before a court of 
justice is not necessarily bound to tell all the 
facts involved to every person whom he ad- 
dresses, or who desires to have him do so; and 
therefore, while a concealment of facts which 

4 



SO A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

ought to be disclosed may be equivalent to a lie, 
there is such a thing as the concealment of facts 
which is not only allowable, but which is an 
unmistakable duty. And to know when con- 
cealment is right, and when it is wrong, is to 
know when concealment partakes of the nature 
of a lie, and when it is a totally different matter. 
Concealment, so far from being in itself a sin, 
is in itself right; it is only in its misuse that it 
becomes reprehensible in a given case. Conceal- 
ment is a prime duty of man; as truly a duty 
as truth-speaking, or chastity, or honesty. God, 
who cannot lie to his creatures, conceals much 
from his creatures. "The secret things belong 
unto the Lord our God: but the things that are 
revealed belong unto us and to our children for 
ever/' l says the author of Deuteronomy ; and 
the whole course of God's revelation to man is 
in accordance with this announced principle of 
God's concealment of that which ought to be con- 
cealed. He who is himself the revelation of God 

1 Deut. 29 : 29. 



DEFINITIONS. 5 1 

says to his chosen disciples, even when he is 
speaking his latest words to them before his 
death: "I have yet many things to say unto 
you, but ye cannot bear them now;" 1 and he 
conceals what, as yet, it is better for them should 
remain concealed. 

There is a profound meaning in the sugges- 
tion, in the Bible story of man's " fall," that, 
when man had come to the knowledge of good 
and evil, the first practical duty which he recog- 
nized as incumbent upon himself, was the duty 
of concealment ; 2 and from that day to this that 
duty has been incumbent on him. Man has a 
duty to conceal his besetting impurities of 
thought and inclinations to sin ; to conceal such 
of his doubts and fears as would dishearten 
others and weaken himself by their expression ; to 
conceal his unkindnesses of spirit and his unjust 
prejudices of feeling; to conceal, in fact, what- 
ever of his innermost personality is liable to work 
harm by its disclosure, and to a knowledge of 

1 John 16 : 12. 2 Gen. 3 : 6, 7. 



1/ 



52 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

which his fellows have no just claim. In the 
world as it is, there is more to be concealed than 
to be disclosed in every individual life; and con- 
cealment rather than disclosure is the rule of 
personal action. 

Absolute and unrestricted frankness in social 
intercourse would be brutal. The speaking of 
the whole truth at all times and to everybody 
could have neither justification nor excuse be- 
tween man and man. We have no right to tell 
our fellows all that we think of them, or fear for 
them, or suspect them of. We have no right to 
betray the confidences of those who trust us, or 
to disclose to all the fact that we have such con- 
fidences to conceal. We have no right to let it 
be generally known that there are such peculiar 
struggles within us as make our lives a ceaseless 
battle with temptations and fears and doubts. 
There is such a thing as an indecent exposure of 
personal opinions, and as a criminal disclosure 
of the treasures of the inner life. 1 How to conceal 

1 See 2 Kings 20 : 12-19. 



DEFINITIONS. 53 

aright that which ought to be concealed, is one^ 
of the vital questions of upright living. 

The duty of right concealment stands over 
against the sin of lying. Whatever ought to be 
concealed, should be concealed, if concealment is 
a possibility without sinning. But the strongest 
desire for concealment can never justify a lie as 
a means of concealment ; and concealment at the 
cost of a lie becomes a sin through the means 
employed for its securing. On the other hand, 
when disclosure is a duty, concealment is sinful, 
because it is made to stand in the way of the 
performance of a duty. Concealment is not in nT 
itself wrong, but it may become wrong through 
its misuse. Lying is in itself wrong, and it can- 
not be made right through any seeming advan- 
tage to be gained by it. 

Concealment which is right in one instance 
may be wrong in another instance, the difference 
being in the relations of the two parties in the 
case. A man who has lost a leg or an eye may 
properly conceal from others generally the fact 



54 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

of his loss by any legitimate means of conceal- 
ment. His defect is a purely personal matter. 
The public has no claim upon him for all the 
facts in the premises. He may have an artificial 
limb or an artificial eye, so constructed as to 
conceal his loss from the ordinary observer. 
There is nothing wrong in this. It is in the 
line of man's primal duty of concealment. But 
if a man thus disabled were applying for a life- 
insurance policy, or were an applicant for re- 
enlistment in the army, or were seeking employ- 
ment where bodily wholeness is a requisite, it 
would be his duty to make known his defect ; 
and the concealment of it from the parties inter- 
ested would be in the realm of the lie. 

So, again, if a man were proposing marriage, or 
were entering into confidential relations with a 
partner in business, or were seeking financial aid 
from a bank, he would have no right to conceal 
from the party interested many a fact which he 
could properly conceal from the public. 

A man who would be justified in concealing 



DEFINITIONS, 5 5 

from the general public his mental troubles, or 
his business embarrassments, or his spiritual 
perplexities, could not properly conceal the 
essential facts in the case from his chosen adviser 
in medicine, or in law, or in matters of religion. 
It is a man's duty to disclose the whole truth to 
him who has a right to know the whole* truth. 
It is a man's right, and it may become his 
duty, to conceal a measure of the truth from 
one who is not entitled to know that portion of 
the truth, so far as he can properly make con- 
cealment. But as a lie is never justifiable, it is 
never a proper means of concealment ; and if 
concealment be, in any case, a mode of lying, it 
is as bad as any other form of lying. 

But concealment, even when it is of facts that 
others have no right to know, may cause others 
to be deceived, and deliberate deceit is one form 
of a lie. How, then, can concealment that is sure 
to result in deception be free from the sin that 
invariably attaches to a lie in any form, or of any 
nature whatsoever? 



56 A LIE NEVER JUSTIEIABLE. 

Concealment which is for the purpose of decep- 
tion, is one thing; concealment which is only for 
the purpose of concealment, but which is sure 
to result in deception, is quite another thing. 
The one is not justifiable, the other may be. In 
the one case it is a man's purpose to deceive his 
fellow-man ; in the other case it is simply his 
purpose to conceal what his fellow-man has no 
right to know, and that fellow-man receives a false 
impression, or deceives himself, in consequence. 

We may, or we may not, be responsible for 
the obvious results of our action; and the moral 
measure of any action depends on the meas- 
ure of our responsibility in the premises. A 
surgeon, who is engaged in an important and 
critical operation, is told that he is wanted else- 
where in a case of life and death. If he sees it 
to be his duty to continue where he is because 
he cannot safely leave this case at this time, he 
obviously is not responsible for results which 
come because of his absence from the side of the 
other sufferer. A man is by a river bank when 



DEFINITIONS, 57 

a boy is sinking before his eyes. If the man 
were to reach out his arms to him, the boy might 
be saved. But the man makes no movement in 
the boy's behalf, and the boy drowns. It might 
seem as though that man were responsible for 
that boy's death ; but when it is known that the 
man is at that moment occupied in saving the 
life of his own son, who is also struggling in 
the water, it will have to be admitted that the 
father is not responsible for the results of his 
inaction in another sphere than that which is for 
the moment the sphere of his imperative duty. 

If a wife and mother has to choose between 
her loving ministry to her sick husband and 
to her sick child, and she chooses that which 
she sees to be the more important duty of the 
hour, she is not responsible for any results that 
follow from her inability to be in two places at 
the same time. A man with a limited income 
may know that ten families are in need of money, 
while he can give help to only two of them. 
Even though others starve while he is supplying 



5 8 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

food to all whom he can aid, he is not responsi- 
ble for results that flow from his decision to limit 
his ministry to his means. 

In all our daily life, our decision to do the one 
duty of the hour involves our refusal to do what 
is not our duty, and we have no responsibility for 
the results which come from such a refusal. So 
in the matter of the duty of concealment, if a man 
simply purposes the concealment from another of 
that which the other has no right to know, and 
does not specifically affirm by word or act that 
which is not true, nor deny by act or word that 
which is true, he is in no degree responsible for 
the self-deception by another concerning a point 
which is no proper concern of that other person. 

Others are self-deceived with reference to us 
in many things, beyond our responsibility or 
knowledge. We may be considered weaker or 
stronger, wiser or more simple, younger or older, 
gladder or sadder, than we are; but for the self- 
deception on that point by the average observer 
we are not responsible. We may not even be 



DEFINITIONS. 59 

aware of it. It is really no concern of ours — or 
of our neighbor's. It is merely an incident of 
human life as it is. We may have an aching 
tooth or an aching heart, and yet refrain from 
disclosing this fact in the expression of our face. 
In such a case we merely conceal what is our 
own possession from those who have no claim 
to know it. Even though they deceive them- 
selves as to our condition in consequence of 
our looks, we are not responsible for their self- 
deception, because they are not possessed of all 
the facts, nor have they any right to them, nor 
yet to a fixed opinion in the case. 

If a man were to have a patch put on his coat, 
he might properly have it put on the under side 
of the coat instead of the outer side, thus making 
what is called " a blind patch," for the purpose 
of concealing the defect in his garment. Even 
though this course might result in a false impres- 
sion on the mind of the casual observer, the 
man would not be blameworthy, as he would be 
if he had pursued the same course with a purpose 



60 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

of deceiving a purchaser of the coat. So, again, 
in the case of a mender of bric-a-brac : it would 
be right for him to cement carefully the parts of 
a broken vase for the mere purpose of concealing 
its damaged condition from the ordinary eye, 
but not for the purpose of deceiving one who 
would be a purchaser. 

A man whose city house is closed from the 
public in the summer season, because of his 
absence in the country, has a perfect right to 
come to that house for a single night, without 
opening the shutters and lighting up the rooms 
in intimation of his presence. He may even keep 
those shutters closed while his room is lighted, 
for the express purpose of concealing the fact of 
his presence there, and yet not be responsible for 
any false impression on the minds of passers-by, 
who think that the proprietor is still in the coun- 
try, and that the city house is vacant. On the 
other hand, if the house be left lighted up all 
through the night, with the shutters open, while 
the inmates are asleep, for the very purpose of 



DEFINITIONS. 6 1 

concealing from those outside the fact that no 
one in the house is awake and on guard, the 
proprietor is not responsible for any self-decep- 
tion which results to those who have no right to 
know the facts in the case. 

And so, again, in the matter of having a man's 
hat or coat on the rack in the front hall, while 
there are only women in the house, the sole 
purpose of the action may be the concealment 
of the real condition of affairs from those who 
have no claim to know the truth, and not the 
deliberate deception of any party in interest. In 
so far as the purpose is merely the concealment 
from others of the defenseless condition of the 
house the action is obviously a proper one, not- 
withstanding its liability to result in false im- 
pressions on the minds of those who have no 
right to an opinion in the case. 

While a man would be justified in concealing, 
without falsehood, the fact of a bodily lack or 
infirmity on his part which concerned himself 
alone, he would not be justified in concealing 



62 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

the fact that he was sick of a contagious disease, 
or that his house was infected by a disease that 
might be given to a caller there. Nor would 
he be justified in concealing a defect in a horse 
or a cow in order to deceive a man into the pur- 
chase of that animal as a sound one, any more 
than he would be justified in slightly covering 
an opening in the ground before his house, so as 
to deceive a disagreeable visitor into stumbling 
into that hole. 

It would be altogether proper for a man with 
a bald head to conceal his baldness from the 
general public by a well- constructed wig. It 
would likewise be proper for him to wear a wig 
in order to guard his shining pate against flies 
while at church in July, or against danger from 
pneumonia in January, even though wide-awake 
children in the neighboring pews deceived them- 
selves into thinking that he had a fine head of 
natural hair. But if that man were to wear that 
wig for the purpose of deceiving a young woman, 
whom he wished to marry, as to his age and as 



DEFINITIONS. 63 

to his freedom from bodily defects, it would be 
quite a different matter. Concealment for the 
mere purpose of concealment may be, not only 
justifiable, but a duty. Concealment for the 
purpose of deception is never justifiable. 

It would seem that this is the principle on 
which God acts with reference to both the 
material and the moral universe. He conceals 
facts, with the result that many a man is self- 
deceived, in his ignorance, as to the size of the 
stars, and the cause of eclipses, and the processes 
of nature, and the consequences of conduct, in 
many an important particular. But man, and 
not God, is responsible for man's self-deception 
concerning points at which man can make no 
claim to a right to know all the truth. 

It is true that this distinction is a delicate one, 
but it is a distinction none the less real on that 
account. A moral line, like a mathematical 
line, has length, but neither breadth nor thick- 
ness. And the line that separates a justifiable 
concealment which causes self-deception on the 



64 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

part of those who are not entitled to know the 
whole truth in the matter, and the deliberate 
concealment of truth for the specific purpose of 
deception, is a line that runs all the way up from 
the foundations to the summit of the universe. 
This line of distinction is vital to an understand- 
ing of the question of the duty of truth-speaking, 
and of the sin of lying. 

An effort at right concealment may include 
truthful statements which are likely, or even sure, 
to result in false impressions on the mind of the 
one to whom they are addressed, and who in con- 
sequence deceives himself as to the facts, when the 
purpose of those statements is not the deception 
of the hearer. A husband may have had a serious 
misunderstanding with his wife that causes him 
pain of heart, so that his face gives sign of it as 
he comes out of the house in the morning. 
The difficulty which has given him such mental 
anxiety is one which he ought to conceal. He 
has no right to disclose it to others. Yet he 
has no right to speak an untruth for the pur- 



DEFINITIONS. 65 

pose of concealing that which he ought to 
conceal. 

It may be that the mental trouble has already 
deprived him of sleep, and has intensified his 
anxiety over a special business matter that awaits 
his attention down town, and that all this shows 
in his face. If so, these facts are secondary but 
very real causes of his troubled look, as he meets 
a neighbor on leaving his house, who says to him : 
" You look very much troubled this morning. 
What's the matter with you ?" Now, if he were 
to say in reply, " Then my looks belie me ; for I 
have no special trouble," he would say what was 
not true. But he might properly say, " I think 
it is very likely. I didn't sleep well last night, 
and I am very tired this morning. And I have 
w T ork before me to-day that I am not easy about." 
Those statements being literally true, and being 
made for the purpose of concealing facts which 
his questioner has no right to know, their utter- 
ance is justifiable, regardless of the workings of 
the mind of the one who hears them. They are 

5 



66 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

made in order to conceal what is back of them, 
not in order to deceive one who is entitled to 
know those primary facts. 

If, again, a physician in attendance on a pa- 
tient sees that there is cause for grave anxiety in 
the patient's condition, and deems it important 
to conceal his fears, so far as he can without 
untruthfulness, he may, in answer to direct ques- 
tions from his patient, give truthful answers that 
are designed to conceal what he has a right to con- 
ceal, without his desiring to deceive his patient, 
and without his being responsible for any self- 
deception on his patient's part that results from 
their conversation. The patient may ask, " Doc- 
tor, am I very sick ? " The doctor may answer 
truthfully, " Not so sick as you might be, by a 
good deal." He may give this answer with a 
cheerful look and tone, and it may result in calm- 
ing the patient's fears. 

If, however, the patient goes on to ask, " But, 
doctor, do you think I'm going to die?" the doc- 
tor may respond lightly, " Well, most of us will 



DEFINITIONS. 67 

die sooner or later, and I suppose you are not to 
be exempt from the ordinary lot of mortals." 
"But," continues the patient, " do you think I 
am going to die of this disease ? " Then the 
doctor can say, seriously and truthfully, " I'm 
sure I don't know. The future is concealed from 
me. You may live longer than I do. I cer- 
tainly hope you are not going to die yet awhile, 
and I'm going to do all I can to prevent it." All 
this would be justifiable, and be within the limits 
of truthfulness. Concealment of the opinions 
of the physician as to the patient's chances of 
life, and not the specific deception of the patient, 
is the object of these answers. 

In no event, however, would the physician be 
justified in telling a lie, any more than he would 
be in committing any other sin, as a means of 
good. He is necessarily limited by the limits 
of right, in the exercise of his professional skill, 
and in the choice of available means. He is in 
no wise responsible for the consequences of his 
refusal to go beyond those limits. 



68 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

Concealment may be, or may not be, of the 
nature of deception. Concealment is not right 
when disclosure is a duty. Concealment of that 
which may properly be concealed is not in itself 
wrong. Efforts at concealment must, in order 
to be right, be kept within the limits of strict 
truthfulness of statement. Concealment for the 
purpose of deception is in the realm of the lie. 
Concealment for the mere purpose of conceal- 
ment may be in the realm of positive duty — in 
the sight of God and for the sake of our fellows. 

It is to be borne in mind that the definitions 
here given do not pivot on the specific illustra- 
tions proffered for their explanation. If, in any 
instance, the illustration seems inapt or imper- 
fect, it may be thrown aside, and reference made 
to the definition itself. The definition represents 
the principle involved ; the illustration is only a 
suggestion of the principle. 



V. 
THE PLEA OF " NECESSITY: 9 



The story is told of an old Quaker, who, after 
listening for a time to the unstinted praises, by 
a dry-goods salesman, of the various articles he 
was trying to dispose of, said quietly : " Friend, 
it is a great pity that lying is a sin, since it seems 
so necessary in thy business." It has been gene- 
rally supposed that this remark of the old Quaker 
was a satirical one, rather than a serious expres- 
sion of regret over the clashing of the demands 
of God's nature with the practical necessities of 
men. Yet, as a matter of fact, there are moral 
philosophers, and writers on Christian ethics, 
who seem to take seriously the position assumed 
by this Quaker, and who argue deliberately that 
there are such material advantages to be secured 

by lying, in certain emergencies, that it would 

6 9 



JO A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

be a great pity to recognize any unvarying rule, 
with reference to lying, that would shut off all 
possibility of desired gain from this practice under 
conditions of greatest urgency. 

It is claimed that lying proffers such unmis- 
takable advantages in time of war, and of sick- 
ness, and in dealings with would-be criminals 
and the insane, and other classes exempt from 
ordinary social consideration, that lying becomes 
a necessity when the gain from it is of sufficient 
magnitude. Looked at in this light, lying is not 
sinful per se, but simply becomes sinful by its 
misuse or untimeliness ; for if it be sinful per se, 
no temporary or material advantage from its 
exercise could ever make it other than sinful. 

If, indeed, the rightfulness of lying is contin- 
gent on the results to be hoped for or to be feared 
from it, the prime question with reference to it, 
in a moral estimate of its propriety, is the limit 
of profit, or of gain, which will justify it as a 
necessity. But with all that has been written on 
this subject in the passing centuries, the advo- 



THE PLEA OF " NE CESS IT Y. " 7 1 

cates of the "lie of necessity " have had to con 
tend with the moral sense of the world as to the 
sinfulness of lying, and with the fact that lying 
is not merely a violation of a social duty, but is 
contrary to the demands of the very nature of 
God, and of the nature of man as formed in the, 
image of God. And it has been the practice of 
such advocates to ignore or to deny the testi- 
mony of this moral sense of the race, and to 
persist in looking at lying mainly in the light 
of its social aspects. 

That the moral sense of the race is against 
the admissibility of the rightfulness of lying, is 
shown by the estimate, of this sin as a sin in the 
ethnic conceptions of it, even among peoples who 
indulge freely in its practice, as well as in the 
teachings of the sacred books of the ages. 
And, moreover, it is not the fact, as is often 
claimed, that lying is generally admitted to 
be allowable between enemies in war time, or 
by a physician to his patient, or by a sane man 
to one who is insane, or in order to the preven- 



72 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

tion of crime, or for the purpose of securing 
some real or supposed advantage in any case. 

The right to conceal from the enemy one's 
weakness, or one's plans, by any exhibit of 
" quaker guns," or of mock fortifications, or of 
movements and counter-movements, or of feints 
of attack, or of surplus watchfires, in time of 
warfare, is recognized on all sides. . But the 
right to lie to or to deceive the enemy by sending 
out a flag of truce, as if in desire for a peaceful 
conference, and following it up with an attack on 
his lines in an unsuspecting moment, is not ad- 
mitted in any theory of " civilized warfare." And 
while a scout may creep within the enemy's lines, 
and make observations of the enemy's weakness 
and strength of position, without being open to 
any charge of dishonorable conduct, — if he comes 
disguised as a soldier of the other side than his 
own, or if he claims to be a mere civilian or non- 
combatant, he is held to be a " spy," and as such 
he is denied a soldier's death, and must yield 
his life on the gallows as a deceiver and a liar. 



THE PLEA OF "NECESSITY." 73 

The distinction between justifiable concealment 
for the mere purpose of concealment, and con- 
cealment for the express purpose of deceiving, is 
recognized as clearly in warfare as in peaceful civil 
life ; and the writer on Christian ethics who ap- 
peals to the approved practices of warfare in sup- 
port of the " lie of necessity " can have only the 
plea of ignorance as an excuse for his baseless 
argument. 

An enemy in warfare has no right to know 
the details of his opponent's plans for his over- 
coming ; but his opponent has no right to lie to 
him, by word or action, as a means of conceal- 
ment ; for a lie is never justifiable, and therefore 
is never a necessity. And this is admitted in the 
customs of honorable warfare. Illustrations of 
this distinction are abundant. A Federal officer, 
taken prisoner in battle, was brought before a 
Confederate officer for examination. He was 
asked his name, his rank, his regiment, his brig- 
ade, his division, and his corps. To all these 
questions he gave truthful answers promptly ; 



74 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

for the enemy had a right to information at these 
points concerning a prisoner of war. But when 
the question came, " What is the present strength 
of your corps ? " he replied, " Two and a half 
millions." " That cannot be true," said the Con- 
federate officer. " Do you expect me to tell you 
the truth, Colonel, in such a matter ? " he re- 
sponded, in reminder of the fact that it was proper 
for him to conceal facts which the other had no 
right to know ; and his method of concealment 
was by an answer that was intended to conceal, 
but not to deceive. 

In Libby Prison, during war time, the attempt 
to prevent written messages being carried out 
by released prisoners was at first made by the 
careful examination of the clothing and persons 
of such prisoners ; but this proved to be ineffec- 
tual. Then it was decided to put every out- 
going prisoner on his word of honor as a soldier 
in this matter ; and that was effectual. A true 
soldier would require something more than the 
average treatise on Christian ethics to convince 



THE PLEA OF "NECESSITY." ?$ 

him that a lie to an enemy in war time is justi- 
fiable as a " lie of necessity," on the ground of its 
profitableness. 

In dealing with the sick, however desirable it 
may be, in any instance, to conceal from a pa- 
tient his critical condition, the difference must 
always be observed between truthful statements 
Jhat conceal that which the physician, or other 
speaker, has a right to conceal, and statements 
that are not strictly true, or that are made for the 
explicit purpose of deceiving the patient. It is 
a physician's duty to conceal from a patient his 
sense of the grave dangers disclosed to his pro- 
fessional eye, and which he is endeavoring to 
meet successfully. And, in wellnigh every case, 
it is possible for him to give truthful answers 
that will conceal from his patient what he ought 
to conceal ; for the best physician does not know 
the future, and his professional guesses are not 
to be put forward as if they were assured certi- 
tudes. 

If, indeed, it were generally understood, as 



y6 A LIE NEVER J US TIE/ABLE. 

many ethical writers are disposed to claim, that 
physicians are ready to lie as a help to their 
patients' recovery, physicians, as a class, would 
thereby be deprived of the power of encouraging 
their patients by words of sincere and hearty 
confidence. There are physicians whose most 
hopeful assurances are of little or no service to 
their patients, because those physicians are known 
to be willing to lie to a patient in an emergency ; 
and how can a timid patient be sure that his case 
does not present such an emergency ? There- 
fore it is that a physician's habit of lying to his 
patients as a means of cure would cause him to 
lose the power of aiding by truthful assurances 
those patients who most needed help of this sort. 
It is poor policy, as policy, to venture a lie in 
behalf of a single patient, at the cost of losing 
the power to make the truth beneficial to a hun- 
dred patients whose lives may be dependent on 
wise words of encouragement. And the policy 
is still poorer as policy, when it is in the line of 
an unmistakable sin. And many a good physician 



THE PLEA OF "NECESSITY." 77 

like many a good soldier, repudiates the idea of 
a " lie of necessity " in his profession. 

Since lying is sinful because a lie is always a 
lie unto God, the fact that a lie is spoken to an 
insane person or to a would-be criminal does not 
make it any the less a sin in God's sight. And 
it is held by some of the most eminent physicians 
-to the insane that lying to the insane is as poor 
policy as it is bad morals, and that it is never 
justifiable, and therefore is never a " necessity " 
in that sphere. 1 

So also in dealing with the would-be criminal, 
a lie is not justifiable in order to save one's life, 
or one's possessions that are dearer than life, nor 
yet to prevent the commission of a crime or to 
guard the highest interests of those whom we 
love. Yet concealment of that which ought to 
be concealed is as truly a duty when disclosure 

1 See, for example, the views of Dr. Thomas S. Kirkbride, phy- 
sician-in-chief and superintendent of the Pennsylvania Hospital for 
the Insane, in the Report of that institution for 1883, at pages 74-76. 
In speaking of the duty of avoiding deception in dealings with the 
insane, he said : " I never think it right to speak anything but the 
truth." 



78 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

would lead to crime, or would imperil the in- 
terests of ourselves or others, as it is in all the 
ordinary affairs of life; but lying as a means of 
concealment is not to be tolerated in such a case 
any more than in any other case. 

If a 'robber, with a pistol in his hand, were in 
a man's bedroom at night, it would not be wrong 
for the defenseless inmate to remain quiet in 
his bed, in concealment of the fact that he was 
awake, if thereby he could save his life, at the 
expense of his property. If a would-be mur- 
derer were seeking his victim, and a man who 
knew this fact were asked to tell of his where- 
abouts, it would be that man's duty to conceal 
his knowledge at this point by all legitimate 
means. He might refuse to speak, even though 
his own life were risked thereby; for it were 
better to die than to lie. And so in many 
another emergency. 

A lie being a sin per se, no price paid for it, 
nor any advantage to be gained from it, would 
make it other than a sin. The temptation to 



THE PLEA OF "NECESSITY." 79 

look at it as a " necessity " may, indeed, be in- 
creased by increasing the supposed cost of its 
refusal ; but it is a temptation to wrong-doing to 
the last. It was a heathen maxim, " Do right 
though the heavens fall," and Christian ethics 
ought not to have a lower standard than that 
of the best heathen morality. 

Duty toward God cannot be counted out of 
this question. God himself cannot lie. .God 
cannot justify or approve a lie. Hence it fol- 
lows that he who deliberately lies in order to 
secure a gain to himself, or to one whom he 
loves, must by that very act leave the service of 
God, and put himself for the time being under 
the rule of the " father of lies." Thus in an 
emergency which seems to a man to justify a 
" lie of necessity " that man's attitude toward 
God might be indicated in this address to him : 
" Lord, I should prefer to continue in your ser- 
vice, and I would do so if you were able and 
willing to help me. But I find myself in an 
emergency where a lie is a 'necessity,' and so I 



80 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

must avail myself of the help of ' the father of 
lies.' If I am carried through this crisis by his 
help, I shall be glad to resume my position in 
your service." The man whose whole moral 
nature recoils from this position, will not be led 
into it by the best arguments of Christian philoso- 
phers in favor of the " lie of necessity." 



VI. 

CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 



Because of the obvious gain in lying in times 
of extremity, and because of the manifest peril 
or cost of truth-telling in an emergency, attempts 
have been made, by interested or prejudiced per- 
sons, all along the ages, to reconcile the general 
duty of adhering to an absolute standard of right, 
with the special inducements, or temptations, to 
depart from that standard for the time being. It 
has been claimed by many that the results of a 
lie would, under certain circumstances, justify 
the use of a lie, — the good end in this case justi- 
fying the bad means in this case. And the en- 
deavor has also been made to show that what is 
called a lie is not always a lie. Yet there have 
ever been found stalwart champions of the right, 

ready to insist that a lie is a sin per se, and there- 

6 81 



82 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

fore not to be justified by any advantage or profit 
in its utterance. 

Prominent in the earlier recorded discussions 
of the centuries concerning the admissibility of 
the lie, are those of the Jewish Talmudists and 
of the Christian Fathers. As in the Bible story 
the standard of right is recognized as unvariable, 
even though such Bible characters as Abraham 
and Jacob and David, and Ananias and Sapphira, 
fail to conform to it in personal practice ; so in 
the records of the Talmud and the Fathers there 
are not wanting instances of godly men who are 
ready to speak in favor of a departure from the 
strictest requirement of the law of truth, even 
while the great sweep of sentiment is seen to be 
in favor of the line that separates the lie from the 
truth eternally. 

Hamburger, a recognized Jewish authority in 
this sphere, represents the teachings of the Tal- 
mud as even more comprehensive and explicit 
than the Bible itself, in favor of the universal 
duty of truthfulness. He says : " Mosaism, with 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 83 

its fundamental law of holiness, has established 
the standard of truthfulness with incomparable 
definiteness and sharpness (see Lev. 19 : 2, 12, 
13, 34-37). Truthfulness is here presented as 
derived directly from the principle of holiness, 
and to be practiced without regard to resulting 
benefit or injury to foe or to friend, to foreigner 
or to countryman. In this moral loftiness these 
Mosaic teachings as to truthfulness pervade the 
whole Bible. In the Talmud they receive a pro- 
founder comprehension and a further develop- 
ment. Truthfulness toward men is represented 
as a duty toward God ; and, on the other hand, 
any departure from it is a departure from God." 1 
As specimen illustrations of the teachings of 
the Talmud on this theme, Hamburger quotes 
these utterances from its pages : " He who alters 
his word, at the same time commits idolatry." 
" Three are hated of God : he who speaks with 
his mouth otherwise than as he feels with his 

1 Hamburger's Real- Encyclopddie fur Blbel und Talmud, I., art. 
11 Truthfulness " ( Wahrhaftigkeit) . 



84 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

heart; he who knows of evidence against any 
one, and does not disclose it," etc. " Four can- 
not appear before God : the scorner, the hypo- 
crite, the liar, and the slanderer." '"A just 
measure thou shalt keep;' that is, we should not 
think one thing in our heart, and speak another 
with our mouth." " Seven commit the offense 
of theft : he who steals [sneaks into] the good 
will of another ; he who invites his friend to visit 
him, and does not mean it in his heart; he who 
offers his neighbor presents, knowing beforehand 
that he will not receive them," etc. 

And Hamburger adds : " Every lie, therefore, 
however excellent the motive, is decidedly for- 
bidden. ... In the tract Jebamoth, 63, Raba 
blames his son for employing a ' lie of necessity ' 
{iiothluge) to restore peace between his father and 
his mother. ... It is clear that the Talmud de- 
cidedly rejects the principle that ' the end justifies 
the means.' nl 

On the other hand, Hamburger cites Rabbi 

1 Compare also art. " Falseness " {Falscheit). 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 8.5 

Ishmael, one of the Talmudists, as teaching that 
a Jew might transgress even the prohibition of 
idolatry (and lying is, according to Talmudic 
teaching, equivalent to idolatry) in order to save 
his life, provided the act was not done in public. 
In support of his position, Rabbi Ishmael cited 
the declaration concerning the statutes of Moses 
in Leviticus 18 : 5, " which if a man do he shall 
live in them," and added by way of explanation : 
" He [the Israelite] is to live through the law, 
but is not to die through it." 1 

And Isaac Abohab, an eminent Spanish rabbi, 
in his Menorath Hammaorf gives other illustra- 
tions from the Talmud of the advocacy of special 
exceptions to the strict law of truthfulness, with 
a good purpose in view, notwithstanding the 
sweeping claim to the contrary by Hamburger. 
He says : " Only when it is the intention to bring 
about peace between men, may anything be 
altered in discourse ; as is taught in the tract 

1 See Hamburger's Real-Encyc, II., art. " Ismael R." 
2 See German translation by R. J. Furstenthal, Discourse II., 1. 



86 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

Jebamoth. Rabbi Ilai says, in the name of 
Rabbi Jehuda, son of Rabbi Simeon : ' One may 
alter something in discourse for the sake of 
establishing harmony.' . . . Rabbi Nathan says : 
' This indeed is a duty/ . . . Rabbi Ishmael taught : 
' Peace is of such importance that for its sake 
God even alters facts.' ' In each of these cases 
the rabbi cited misapplies a Bible passage in sup- 
port of his position. 

Isaac Abohab adds : " In like manner the 
rabbis say that one may praise a bride in the 
presence of her bridegroom, and say that she is 
handsome and devout, when she is neither, if 
the intention predominates to make her attractive 
in the eyes of her bridegroom. Nevertheless a 
man is not to tell lies even in trifling matters, 
lest lying should come to be a habit with him, 
as is warned against in the tract Jebamoth." 

Thus it would appear that there were discus- 
sions on this subject among the rabbis of the 
Talmud, and that while there were those who 
advocated the " lie of necessity," as a matter of 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 87 

personal gain or as a means of good to others, 
there were those who stood firmly against any 
form of the lie, or any falsity, as in itself at vari- 
ance with the very nature of God, and with the 
plain duty of God's children. 

Among the Christian Fathers it was much the 
same as among the Jewish rabbis, in discussions 
over this question. The one unvarying standard 
was recognized, by the clearest thinkers, as bind- 
ing on all for always ; yet there were individuals 
inclined to find a reason for exceptions in the 
practical application of this standard. The phase 
of the question that immediately presented itself 
to the early Christians was, whether it were 
allowable for a man to deny to a pagan enemy 
that he was a Christian, or that one whom he 
held dear was a Christian, when the speaking of 
the truth would cost him his life, or cost the life 
of one whom he loved. 

There were those who held that the duty to 
speak the truth was merely a social obligation, 
and that when a man showed himself as an enemy 



88 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

of God and of his fellows, he shut himself out from 
the pale of this social obligation ; moreover, that 
when such a man could be deterred from crime, 
and at the same time a Christian's life could be 
preserved, by the telling of an untruth, a false- 
hood would be justifiable. If the lie were told 
in private under such circumstances, it was by 
such persons considered different from a public 
denial of one's faith. But, on the other hand, 
the great body of Christians, in the apostolic age, 
and in the age early following, acted on the 
conviction that a lie is a sin per se, and that no 
emergency could make a lie a necessity. And 
it was in fidelity to this conviction that the roll 
of Christian martyrs was so gloriously extended. 
Justin Martyr, whose Apologies in behalf of 
the Christians are the earliest extant, speaks for 
the best of the class he represents when he says : 
" It is in our power, when we are examined, to 
deny that we are Christians ; but we would not 
live by telling a lie." l And again : " When we 

1 First Apology, Chapter 8. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 89 

are examined, we make no denial, because we are 
not conscious of any evil, but count it impious 
not to speak the truth in all things, which also 
we know is pleasing to God." 1 There was no 
thought in such a mind as Justin Martyr's, or in 
the minds of his fellow-martyrs, that any life was 
worth saving at the cost of a lie in God's sight. 

There were many temptations, and great ones, 
to the early Christians, to evade the consequences 
of being known as refusers to worship the gods 
of the Romans ; and it is not to be wondered at 
that many poor mortals yielded to those tempta- 
tions. Exemption from punishment could be 
purchased by saying that one had offered sacri- 
fices to the gods, or by accepting a certificate 
that such sacrifice had been made, even when 
such was not the fact ; or, again, by professing 
a readiness to sacrifice, without the intention of 
such compliance, or by permitting a friend to 
testify falsely as to the facts ; and there were 
those who thought a lie of this sort justifiable, 

1 Second Apology, Chapter 4. 



90 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

for the saving of their lives, when they would 
not have openly renounced their Christian faith. 1 
There was much discussion over these practices 
in the writings of the Fathers ; but while there 
was recognized a difference between open apos- 
tasy and the tolerance of a falsehood in one's 
behalf, it was held by the church authorities that 
a lie was always sinful, even though there were 
degrees in modes of sinning. 

Ringing words against all forms of lying were 
spoken by some of the Christian Fathers. Says 
the Shepherd of Hermas : " Love the truth, and 
let nothing but truth proceed from your mouth, 
that the spirit which God has placed in your 
flesh may be found truthful before all men ; and 
the Lord, who dwelleth in you, will be glorified, 
because the Lord is truthful in every word, and 
in him is no falsehood. They, therefore, who lie, 
deny the Lord, and rob him, not giving back to 

1 See Smith and Cheetham's Dictionary of 'Christian Antiquities, 
art. " Libelli." See also Bingham's Antiquities of the Christian 
Church, Book XVI., Chap. 13, # 5 ; also Book XVI., Chap. 3, § 14; 
with citations from Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 9 1 

him the deposit which they have received. For 
they received from him a spirit free from false- 
hood. If they give him back this spirit untruth- 
ful, they pollute the commandment of the Lord, 
and become robbers." 1 

Tertullian names among " sins of daily com- 
mittal, to which we all are liable," the "sin " of 
" lying, from bashfulness [or modesty], or ' neces- 
sity.' " 2 Origen also speaks of the frequency of 
"lying, or of idle talking;" 3 as if possibly its fre- 
quency were in some sense an excuse for it. And 
Origen specifically claimed that the apostles Peter 
and Paul agreed together to deceive their hearers 
at Antioch by simulating a dissension between 
themselves, when in reality they were agreed.' 4 
Origen also seemed to approve of false speaking 

1 Book II., Commandment Third. The Ante-Nicene Fathers 
(Am. ed.), II., 21. 

2 " On Modesty," Chap. 19. The Ante-Nicene Fathers, XIV., 97. 

3 Origen's Commentaries on Matthew, Tract VI., p. 60 ; cited 
in Bingham's Antiq. of Chr. Ch. f Book XVI., Chap. 3. 

4 Gal. 2 : 11-14. A concise statement of the influence of this 
teaching of Origen on the patristic interpretations of the passage in 
Galatians, is given by Lightfoot in his commentary on Galatians, 
sixth edition, pp. 128-132. 



92 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

to those who were not entitled to know all the 
truth ; as when he says of the cautious use of 
falsehood, " a man on whom necessity imposes 
the responsibility of lying is bound to use very 
great care, and to use falsehood as he would a 
stimulant or a medicine, and strictly to preserve 
its measure, and not go beyond the bounds ob- 
served by Judith in her dealings with Holofernes, 
whom she overcame by the wisdom with which 
she dissembled her words." 1 

There were Christian Fathers who found it 
convenient to lie, in their own behalf or in behalf 
of others ; and it was quite natural for such mor- 
tals to seek to find an excuse for lies that " seemed 
so necessary " for their purposes. When Greg- 
ory of Nyssa, in his laudable effort to bring 
about a reconciliation between his elder brother 
Basil and their uncle, was %i induced to practice 
a deceit which was as irreconcilable with Chris- 

1 Quoted from the sixth book of Origen's Miscellanies by Jerome, 
in his Apology against Rufinus, Book I., $ 18. See The Nice ft e 
and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series (Am. ed.), III., 492. See, 
also, Neander's Geschichte der Christlichen Ethlk, pp. 160, 167. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 93 

tian principles as with common sense," l he was 
ready to argue in defense of such a course. 

So again, when his brother Basil was charged 
with falsehood in a comparatively " trivial " mat- 
ter, (where, in fact, he had merely been in error 
unintentionally,) Gregory falls back upon the 
comforting suggestion, that as to lying, in one 
way or another everybody is at fault ; " accord- 
ingly, we accept that general statement which the 
Holy Spirit uttered by the Prophet, ' Every man 
is a liar.' " 2 Gregory protests against the " solemn 
reflections on falsehood" by Eunomius, in this 
connection, and his " seeing equal heinousness 
in it whether in great or very trivial matters." 
" Cease," he says, " to bid us think it of no ac- 
count to measure the guilt of a falsehood by the 
slightness or importance of the circumstances." 
Basil, on the contrary, asserts without qualifica- 
tion, as his conviction, that it never is permissible 
to employ a falsehood even for a good purpose. 

1 Moore's Life of S. Gregory of Nyssa. The Nicene and Post- 
Nicene Fathers, second series (Am. ed.), V., 5. 

2 Ibid., p. 46. 



94 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

He appeals to the words of Christ that all lies 
are of the Devil. 1 

Chrysostom, as a young man, evaded ordina- 
tion for himself and secured it to his dearest 
friend Basil (who should not be confounded with 
Basil the Great, the brother of Gregory of Nyssa) 
by a course of deception, which he afterwards 
labored to justify by the claim that there were 
lies of necessity, and that God approved of de- 
ception as a means of good to others. 2 In the 
course of his exculpatory argument, he said to 
his much aggrieved friend Basil : " Great is the 
value of deceit, provided it be not introduced 
with a mischievous intention. In fact, action of 
this sort ought not to be called deceit, but rather 
a kind of good management, cleverness, and 
skill, capable of finding out ways where resources 
fail, and making up for the defects of the mind. 
. . . That man would fairly deserve to be called 
a deceiver who made an unrighteous use of the 

1 Neander's Geschichte der Christlichen Ethik, p. 219. 
2 See Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography, I., 
519 f. ; art. " Chrysostom, John." 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 95 

practice, not one who did so with a salutary pur- 
pose. And often it is necessary to deceive, and 
to do the greatest benefits by means of this de- 
vice, whereas he who has gone by a straight 
course has done great mischief to the person 
whom he has not deceived." 1 

In fact, Chrysostom seems, in this argument, 
to recognize no absolute and unvarying standard 
of truthfulness as binding on all at all times ; but 
to judge lies and deceptions as wrong only when 
they are wrongly used, or when they result in 
evil to others. He appears to act on the anti- 
Christian theory 2 that "the end justifies the 
means." Indeed, Dr. Schaff, in reprobating this 
"pious fraud" of Chrysostom, as "conduct which 
every sound Christian conscience must con- 
demn," says of the whole matter : " The Jesu- 
itical maxim, 'the end justifies the means,' is 
much older than Jesuitism, and runs through 
the whole apocryphal, pseudo-prophetic, pseudo- 

1 See Chrysostom's "Treatise on the Priesthood," in The Nicene 
and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series (Am. ed.), IX., 34-38. 

2 Rom. 3 : 7, 8. 



96 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

apostolic, pseudo -Clementine, and pseudo-Isi- 
dorian literature of the early centuries. Several 
of the best Fathers show a surprising want of a 
strict sense of veracity. They introduce a sort 
of cheat even into their strange theory of redemp- 
tion, by supposing that the Devil caused the cruci- 
fixion under the delusion [intentionally produced 
by God] that Christ was a mere man, and thus 
lost his claim upon the fallen race." x 

Chrysostom, like Gregory of Nyssa, having 
done that which was wrong in itself, with a laud- 
able end in view, naturally attempts its defense by 
the use of arguments based on a confusion in his 
own mind of things which are unjustifiable, with 
things which are allowable. He does not seem to 
distinguish between deliberate deception as a 
mode of lying, and concealment of that which one 
has a right to conceal. Like many another 
defender of the right to lie in behalf of a worthy 
cause, in all the centuries, Chrysostom essays no 

1 See Dr. Schaff's " Prologemena to The Life and Works of St. 
Chrysostom," in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series 
(Am. ed.), IX., 8. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 97 

definition of the "lie," and indicates no distinc- 
tion between culpable concealment, and conceal- 
ment that is right and proper. Yet Chrysostom 
was a man of loving heart and of unwavering 
purpose of life. In an age of evil-doing, he stood 
firm for the right. And in spite of any lack of 
logical perceptions on his part in a matter like 
this, it can be said of him with truth that " per- 
haps few have ever exercised a more powerful 
influence over the hearts and affections of the 
most exalted natures." 1 

Augustine, on the other hand, looks at this 
question, in accordance with the qualities of his 
logical mind, in its relation to an absolute stand- 
ard ; and he is ready to accept the consequences 
of an adherence to that standard, whether they 
be in themselves desirable or deplorable. He is 
not afraid to define a lie, and to stand by his 
definition in his argument. He sees and notes 
the difference between justifiable concealment, 
and concealment that is for the purpose of de- 

1 Smith and Wace's Dictio?iary of Christian Biography, I., 532. 

7 



98 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

ception. " It is lawful then," he says on this 
point, " to conceal at fitting time whatever seems 
fit to be concealed : but to tell a lie is never 
lawful, therefore neither to conceal by telling 
a lie." 1 

In his treatise " On Lying" (De Mendacid)? 
and in his treatise "Against Lying" (Contra 
Mendacinni)f as well as in his treatise on " Faith, 
Hope, and Love" (Enchiridion)* and again in his 
Letters to Jerome, 5 Augustine states the prin- 
ciple involved in this vexed question of the ages, 
and goes over all the arguments for and against 
the so-called " lie of necessity." He sees a lie to 
be a sin per se, and therefore never admissible for 
any purpose whatsoever. He sees truthfulness 
to be a duty growing out of man's primal relation 
to God, and therefore binding on man while man 
is in God's sight. He strikes through the specious 
arguments based on any temporary advantages 

1 The Nice7ie and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series (Am. ed.), 
IX., 466. 

2 Ibid., III., 455-477. 3 Ibid., pp. 479-500. 

4 Ibid., pp. 230-276. 5 Ibid., I., " Letters of St. Augustine." 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 99 

to be secured through lying, and rejects utterly 
the suggestion that man may do evil that good 
may come. 

The sound words of Augustine on this ques- 
tion, as based on his sound arguments, come 
down to us with strength and freshness through 
the intervening centuries ; and they are worthy 
of being emphasized as the expressions of un- 
changing truth concerning the duty of truthful- 
ness and the sin of lying. "There is a great 
question about lying," he says at the start, 
" which often arises in the midst of our every- 
day business, and gives us much trouble, that 
we may not either rashly call that a lie which is 
not such, or decide that it is sometimes right to 
tell a lie ; that is, a kind of honest, well-meant, 
charitable lie." This question he discusses with 
fulness, and in view of all that can be said on 
both sides. Even though life or salvation were 
to pivot on the telling of a lie, he is sure that 
no good to be gained could compensate for the 
committal of a sin. 



1 00 A LIE NE VER JUS TIF I A BLE. 

Arguing that a lie is essentially opposed to 
God's truth — by which alone man can have 
eternal life — Augustine insists that to attempt to 
save another's life through lying, is to set off 
one's eternal life against the mere bodily life of 
another. " Since then by lying eternal life is 
lost, never for any man's temporal life must a 
lie be told. And as to those who take it ill, and 
are indignant that one should refuse to tell a lie, 
and thereby slay his own soul in order that 
another may grow old in the flesh, what if by our 
committing adultery a person might be delivered 
from death : are Ave therefore to steal, to com- 
mit whoredom. . . . To ask whether a man 
ought to tell a lie for the safety of another, is 
just the same as asking whether for another's 
safety a man ought to commit iniquity." 

" Good men," he says, " should never tell lies." 
"To tell a lie is never lawful, therefore neither to 
conceal [when concealment is desirable] by tell- 
ing a lie." Referring to the fact that some seek 
to find a justification in the Bible teachings for 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. IOI 

lying in a good cause, — " even in the midst of 
the very words of the divine testimonies seeking 
place for a lie," — he insists, after a full examina- 
tion of this claim, "that those [cited] testimonies 
of Scripture have none other meaning than that 
we must never at all tell a lie." 

"A lie is not allowable, even to save another 
from injury." "Every lie must be called a sin." 
" Nor are we to suppose that there is any lie 
that is not a sin, because it is sometimes pos- 
sible, by telling a lie, to do service to another." 
" It cannot be denied that they have attained a 
very high standard of goodness who never lie 
except to save a man from injury; but in the 
case of men who have reached this standard, it 
is not the deceit, but their good intention, that 
is justly praised, and sometimes even rewarded," 
— as in the case of Rahab in the Bible story. 
" There is no lie that is not contrary to truth. 
For as light and darkness, piety and impiety, 
justice and injustice, sin and righteousness, health 
and sickness, life and death, so are truth and a 



102 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

lie contrary the one to the other. Whence by 
how much we love the former, by so much ought 
we to hate the latter." 

" It does indeed make very much difference for 
what cause, with what end, with what intention, a 
thing be done : but those things which are clearly 
sins, are upon no plea of a good cause, with no 
seeming good end, no alleged good intention, to 
be done. Those works, namely, of men, which 
are not in themselves sins, are now good, now evil, 
according as their causes are good or evil. . . . 
When, however, the works in themselves are 
evil, . . . who is there that will say, that upon 
good causes, they may be done, so as either to 
be no sins, or, what is more absurd, to be just 
sins?" (( He who says that some lies are just, 
must be judged to say no other than that some 
sins are just, and that therefore some things are 
just which are unjust: than which what can be 
more absurd?" "Either then we are to eschew 
lies by right doing, or to confess them [when 
guilty of them] by repenting : but not, while 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 103 

they unhappily abound in our living, to make 
them more by teaching also." 

In replying to the argument that it would be 
better to lie concerning an innocent man whose 
life was sought by an enemy, or by an unjust 
accuser, than to betray him to his death, Augus- 
tine said courageously : " How much braver, . . . 
how much more excellent, to say, ' I will neither 
betray nor lie.' ' " This," he said, "did a former 
bishop of the Church of Tagaste, Firmus by 
name, and even more firm in will. For when he 
was asked by command of the emperor, through 
officers sent by him, for a man who was taking 
refuge with him, and whom he kept in hiding 
with all possible care, he made answer to their 
questions, that he could neither tell a lie nor 
betray a man ; and when he had suffered so 
many torments of body (for as yet emperors 
were not Christians), he stood firm in his pur- 
pose. Thereupon, being brought before the em- 
peror, his conduct appeared so admirable that 
he without any difficulty obtained a pardon for 



104 . / LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

the man whom lie was trying to save. What 
conduct could be more brave and constant?" 1 

The treatise "Against Lying" was written by 
Augustine with special reference to the practice 
and teaching of the sect of Priscillianists. These 
Christians " affirmed, with some other of the theo- 
sophic sects, that falsehood was allowable for a 
holy end. Absolute veracity was only binding 
between fellow-members of their sect." 2 Hence it 
was claimed by some other Christians that it would 
be fair to shut out Priscillianists from a rio-ht to 
have only truth spoken to them, since they would 
not admit that it is always binding between man 
and man. This view of truthfulness as merely 
asocial obligation Augustine utterly repudiated; 
as, indeed, must be the case with every one who 
reckons lying a sin in and of itself. Augustine 
considered, in this treatise, various hypothetical 
cases, in which the telling of the truth might 

1 See The Niccne and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series (Am ed ) 
III., 408. ' * ; ' 

2 See Smith and Wace's Diet, of Chris. Diog., IV., 478, art. 
" Priscillianus." 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 105 

result in death to a sick man, while the telling of a 
falsehood might save his life. He said frankly : 
"And who can bear men casting up to him what 
a mischief it is to shun a lie that might save life, 
and to choose truth which might murder a man ? 
I am moved by this objection exceedingly, but it 
were doubtful whether also wisely." Yet he sees 
that it were never safe to choose sin as a means 
to good, in preference to truth and right with all 
their consequences. 

Jerome having, like many others, adopted Ori- 
gen's explanation of the scene between Peter and 
Paul at Antioch, Augustine wrote to him in pro- 
test against such teaching, with its implied ap- 
proval of deceit and falsehood. 1 A correspon- 
dence on this subject was continued between 
these two Fathers for years ; 2 and finally Jerome 
was led to adopt Augustine's view of the matter, 3 
and also to condemn Origen for his loose views 

1 See The Nlcene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series (Am. 
ed.), I., Letters XXVIII., XL. 

2 Ibid., Letters LXVIL, LXVIIL, LXXIL, LXXIII., LXXIV., 
LXXV. 3 Ibid., Letter CLXXX. 



106 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

as to the duty of veracity. 1 But however Jerome 
might vacillate in his theory, as in his practice, 
concerning the permanent obligations of truth- 
fulness, Augustine stood firm from first to last in 
the position which is justified by the teachings 
of the Bible and by the moral sense of the human 
race as a whole, — that a lie is always a lie and 
always a sin, and that a lie can never be justified 
as a means to even the best of ends. 

From the days of Chrysostom and* Augustine 
to the present time, all discussions of this ques- 
tion have been but a repetition of the arguments 
and objections then brought forward and exam- 
ined. There can be, in fact, only two positions 
maintained with any show of logical consistency. 
Either a lie is in its very nature antagonistic to 
the being of God, and therefore not to be used 
or approved by him, whatever immediate ad- 
vantages mi^ht accrue from it, or whatever con- 
sequences might pivot on its rejection ; or a lie 

1 The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series (Am. ed.), 
III., 460 ff . ; Rufinus Apology, Book II.; Jeromes Apology, 
Book I., p. 492. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 07 

is not in itself a sin, is not essentially at variance 
with the nature of God, but is good or evil 
according to the spirit of its use, and the end 
to be gained by it ; and therefore on occasions 
God could lie, or could approve lying on the 
part of those who represent him. 

The first of these positions is that maintained 
by the Shepherd of Hermas, by Justin Martyr, by 
Basil the Great, and by Augustine; the second 
is practically that occupied by Gregory of Nyssa 
and Chrysostom, even though they do not ex- 
plicitly define, or even seem to perceive, it as 
their position. There are, again, those like 
Origen and Jerome, who are now on one side 
of the dividing line, and now on the other ; but 
they are not logically consistent with themselves 
in their opinions or practices. And those who 
are not consistent usually refrain from explicit 
definitions of the lie and of falsehood; they make 
no attempt at distinguishing between justifiable 
concealment, and concealment for the very pur- 
pose of deception. 



108 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

With all the arguments on this question, in 
all the centuries, comprised within these well- 
defined bounds, it were useless to name each 
prominent disputant, in order merely to classify 
him as on the one side or on the other, or as 
zigzagging along the line which he fails to per- 
ceive. It were sufficient to point out a few pre- 
eminent mountain peaks, in the centuries be- 
tween the fifth and the nineteen of the Christian 
era, as indicative of the perspective history of 
this discussion. 

Towering above the greatest of the School- 
men in the later middle ages stands Thomas 
Aquinas. As a man of massive intellect, of 
keenness of perception, of consistent logical in- 
stincts, and of unquestioned sincerity and great 
personal devoutness, we might expect him to be 
found, like Augustine, on the side of principle 
against policy, in unqualified condemnation of 
lying under any circumstances whatsoever, and 
in advocacy of truthfulness at all hazards. And 
that, as a matter of fact, is his position. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 109 

In his Summa Theologice 1 Aquinas discusses 
this whole question with eminent fairness, and 
with great thoroughness. He first states the 
claims of those who, from the days of Chrysos- 
tom, had made excuses for lying with a good 
end in view, and then he meets those claims 
severally. He looks upon lies as evil in them- 
selves, and as in no way to be deemed good and 
lawful, since a right concurrence of all elements 
is essential to a thing's being good. " Whence, 
every lie is a sin, as Augustine says in his book 
' Against Lying.' 5 His conclusion, in view of 
all that is to be said on both sides of the ques- 
tion, is : " Lying is sinful not only as harmful to 
our neighbor, but because of its own disorderli- 
ness. It is no more permitted to do what is dis- 
orderly [that is, contrary to the divine order of 
the universe] in order to prevent harm, than it 
is to steal for the purpose of giving alms, except 
indeed in case of necessity when all things are 
common property [when, for instance, the taking 

1 Secunda Secundce, Quasstio CX., art. III. 



IIO A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

of needful food in time of a great disaster, as on 
a wrecked ship, is not stealing]. And therefore 
it is not allowable to utter a lie with this view, 
that we may deliver one from some peril. It is 
allowable, however, to conceal the truth pru- 
dently, by a sort of dissimulation, as Augustine 
says." This recognizes the correctness of Augus- 
tine's position, that concealment of what one has 
a right to conceal may be right, provided no lie. 
is involved in the concealment. As to the rela- 
tive grades of sin in lying, Aquinas counts lying 
to another's hurt as a mortal sin, and lying to 
avert harm from another as a venial sin ; but he 
sees that both are sins. 

It is natural to find Aquinas, as a representa- 
tive of the keen -minded Dominicans, standing 
by truth as an eternal principle, regardless of 
consequences ; as it is also natural to find, on 
the other side, Duns Scotus, as a representative 
of the easy-going Franciscans, with his denial of 
good absolute save as manifested in the arbitrary 
will of God. Duns Scotus accepted the " theory 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 1 1 

of a twofold truth," ascribed to Averroes, "that 
one and the same affirmation might be theologi- 
cally true and philosophically false, and vice 
versa!' In Duns Scotus's view, "God does not 
choose a thing because it is good, but the thing 
chosen is good because God chooses it;" "it is 
good simply and solely because God has willed 
it precisely so; but he might just as readily have 
willed the opposite thereof. Hence also God is 
not [eternally] bound by his commands, and he 
can in fact annul them." * According to this 
view, God could forbid lying to-day and justify it 
to-morrow. It is not surprising, therefore, that 
"falsehood and misrepresentation" are "under 
certain circumstances allowable," in the opinion 
of Duns Scotus. 

So, all along the centuries, the religious 
teacher who holds to the line between truth and 
falsehood as an eternal line must, if logically con- 
sistent, refuse to admit any possible justification 

1 See Kurtz's Chtirch History (Macpherson's Translation), II., 
101, 167-169; Ueberweg's History of Philosophy, I., 416, 456 f. ; 
Wuttke's Christian Ethics (Am. ed.), I., 218, § 34. 



112 A LIE NE VER JUSTIFIA BLE. 

of lying. Only he who denies an eternally abso- 
lute line between the true and the false could 
admit with consistency the justification by God 
of an act that is essentially hostile to the divine 
nature. Any exception to this rule is likely to 
be where a sympathetic nature inclines a teacher 
to seek for an excuse for that which seems de- 
sirable even though it be theoretically wrong. 

When it comes to the days of the Protestant 
Reformation, we find John Calvin, like his proto- 
type Augustine, and like Augustine's follower 
Aquinas, standing firmly against a lie as antago- 
nistic to the very nature of God, and therefore 
never justifiable. Martin Luther, also, is a fear- 
less lover of the truth ; but he is disposed to find 
excuses for a lie told with a good end in view, 
although he refrains from asserting that even the 
best disposed lie lacks the element of sinfulness. 1 
On the other hand, Ignatius Loyola, and his 
associates in the founding of the Society of Jesus 

x See Martensen's Christian Ethics, p. 216. Compare, for ex- 
ample, Luther's comments on Exodus 1 : 15-21, with Calvin's 
comments on Genesis 12 : 14-20. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 1 3 

as a means of checking the Protestant Reforma- 
tion, acted on the idea that was involved in the 
theology of Duns Scotus, that the only standard 
of truth and right is in the absolute and arbi- 
trary will of God ; and that, therefore, if God, 
speaking through his representative in the newly 
formed Society, commands the telling of a lie, 
a lie is justifiable, and its telling is a duty. 
Moreover, these Jesuit leaders in defining, or in 
explaining aw r ay, the lie, include, under the head 
of justifiable concealment, equivocations and falsi- 
fications that the ordinary mind would see to be 
forms of the lie. 1 

It is common to point to the arguments of the 
Jesuits in favor of lies of expediency, in their 
work for the Church and for souls, as though 
their position were exceptional, and they stood 
all by themselves in including falsehood as a 
means to be employed rightfully for'a good end. 

1 See Symonds's Renaissance in Italy, I., 263-267; Cartwright's 
The lesuits ; Meyrick's Moral Theology of the Church of Rome ; 
Pascal's Provincial Letters. See, also, Kurtz's Church History, 
II., 430. 

8 



114 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

But in this they are simply logically consistent 
followers of those Christian Fathers, and their 
successors in every branch of the Church, who 
have held that a lie for righteous purposes was 
admissible when the results to be secured by it 
were of vital importance. All the refinements 
of casuistry have their value to those who admit 
that a lie maybe right under certain conceivable 
circumstances ; but to those who, like Augustine 
and Aquinas, insist that a lie is a sin per se, and 
therefore never admissible, casuistry itself has no 
interest as a means of showing when a sin is not 
sinful. 1 

Some of the zealous defenders of the princi- 
ples and methods of the Jesuits affirm that, in 
their advocacy of dissimulation and prevarication 
in the interests of a good cause, the Jesuits do 
not intend to justify lying, but are pointing out 
methods of proper concealment which are not 
within the realm of the lie. In this (waiving the 

1 Hence the casuistry of the Schoolmen and of the Jesuits, and 
the question of Mental Reservations, and of " Probabilities," are 
not treated in detail here. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 1 5 

question whether these defenders are right or 
not as to the fact) they seem even more de- 
sirous of being counted against lying than those 
teachers, in the Romish Church or among Prot- 
estants, who boldly affirm that a lie itself is 
sometimes justifiable. Thus it is claimed by a 
Roman Catholic writer, in defense of the Jesuits, 
that Liguori, their favorite theologian," taught 
" that to speak falsely is immutably a sin against 
God. It may be permitted under no circum- 
stances, not even to save life. Pope Innocent III. 
says, ' Not even to defend our life is it lawful to 
speak falsely; ' " therefore, when Liguori approves 
any actions that seem opposed to truthfulness, 
" he allows the instances because they are not 
falsehood." 1 On the other hand, Jeremy Taylor 
squarely asserts : " It is lawful to tell a lie to 
children or to madmen, because they, having no 
powers of judging, have no right to the truth." 2 
But Jeremy Taylor's trouble is in his indefinite 

1 See Meyrick's Moral Theology of the Church of Rome, Appen- 
dix, p. 256 f. 

2 Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubita?itium y in his Works, X., 103. 



I 1 6 A LIE NEVER J US TIE/ABLE, 

definition of u a lie," and in his consequent con- 
fusion of mind and of statement with reference 
to the limitations of the duty of veracity. He 
writes on this subject at considerable length, 1 
and in alternation declares himself plainly first 
on one side, and then on the other, of the main 
question, without even an attempt at logical con- 
sistency. He starts out with the idea that " we 
are to endeavor to be like God, who is truth 
essentially;" that " God speaks truth because it 
is his nature;" that " the Holy Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testament do indefinitely and 
severely forbid lying," and " our blessed Saviour 
condemns it by declaring every lie to be of the 
Devil;" and that u beyond these things nothing 
can [could] be said for the condemnation of 
lying." All that certainly is explicit and sound, 
— as sound as Basil the Great, as St. Augustine, 
or as Thomas Aquinas ! 

When he attempts the definition of a lie, how- 

1 Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium, in his Works, X., ioo- 
132. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 1 7 

ever, Jeremy Taylor would seem to claim that 
injustice toward others and an evil motive are of 
its very essence, and that, if these be lacking, a 
lie is not a lie. " Lying is to be understood to 
be something said or written to the hurt of a 
neighbor, which cannot be understood [by the 
hearer or reader] otherwise than to differ from 
the mind of him that speaks." As Melanchthon 
says, "To lie is to deceive our neighbor to his 
hurt." " If a lie be unjust, it can never become 
lawful; but if it can be separate from injustice, 
then it may be innocent." 

Jeremy Taylor naturally falls back on the Bible 
stories of the Hebrew midwives and Rahab the 
harlot, and assumes that God commended their 
lying, as lying, because they had a good end in 
view; and he asserts that "it is necessary some- 
times by a lie to advantage charity by losing of 
a truth to save a life," and that " to tell a lie for 
charity, to save a man's life, the life of a friend, 
of a husband, of a prince, of an useful and a pub- 
lic person, hath not only been done in all times, 



1 18 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

but commended by great and wise and good 
men." From this it would appear that lying, 
which Jeremy Taylor sets out with denouncing as 
contrary to God's nature, and as declared by our 
Saviour to be always of the Devil, may, under 
certain circumstances, be a godly sin. Gregory 
of Nyssa and young Chrysostom could not have 
done better than this in showing the sinlessness 
of a sin in a good cause. 

Seeing that concealment of that which is true 
is often a duty, and seeing also that concealment 
of that which ought to be disclosed is often prac- 
tically a lie, Jeremy Taylor apparently jumps to 
the conclusion that concealment and equivoca- 
tion and lying are practically the same thing, and 
that therefore lying is sometimes a duty, while 
again it is a sin. He holds that the right to be 
spoken to in truthfulness, " though it be regularly 
and commonly belonging to all men, yet it may 
be taken away by a superior right supervening; 
or it may be lost, or it may be hindered, or it 
may cease upon a greater reason." As " that 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 1 9 

which is but the half of a true proposition either 
signifies nothing or is directly a lie," it must be 
admitted that " in the same cases in which it is 
lawful to tell a lie, in the same cases it is lawful 
to use a mental reservation;" and " where it is 
lawful to lie, it is lawful to equivocate, which 
may be something less than a plain lie." More- 
over, "it is lawful upon a just cause of great 
charity or necessity to use, in our answers and 
intercourses, words of divers signification, though 
it does deceive him that asks." 

Jeremy Taylor ingenuously confesses that, in 
certain cases where lying is allowable or is a 
duty, " the prejudice which the question is like 
to have is in the meaning and evil sound of the 
word lying; which, because it is so hateful to 
God and man, casts a cloud upon anything that 
it comes near." But, on the whole, Jeremy 
Taylor is willing to employ with commendation 
that very word "lying" which is "so hateful to 
God and man." And in various cases he insists 
that "it is lawful to tell a lie," although "the lie 



120 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

must be charitable and useful," — a good lie, and 
not a wicked lie ; for a good lie is good, and a 
wicked lie is wicked. He does not shrink from 
the consequences of his false position. 

Jeremy Taylor can therefore be cited as argu- 
ing that a lie is never admissible, but that it often 
is commendable. He does not seem to be quite 
sure of any real difference between lying and 
justifiable concealment, or to have in his mind 
an unvarying line between truthfulness and lying. 
He admits that God and man hate lying, but that 
a good lie, nevertheless, is a very good thing. 
And so he leaves the subject in more of a mud- 
dle than he found it. 

Coming down to the present century, perhaps 
the most prominent and influential defender of 
the "lie of necessity," or of limitations to the 
law of veracity, is Richard Rothe; therefore it is 
important to give special attention to his opinions 
and arguments on this subject. Rothe was a 
man of great ability, of lovely spirit, and of per- 
vasive personal influence; and as a consequence 



CENTURIES OE DISCUSSION. 121 

his opinions carry special weight with his numer- 
ous pupils and followers. 

Kurtz 1 characterizes Rothe as " one of the 
most profound thinkers of the century, equaled 
by none of his contemporaries in the grasp, 
depth, and originality of his speculation," and his 
"Theological Ethics" as "a work which in depth, 
originality, and conclusiveness of reasoning, is 
almost unapproached." And in the opinion of 
Lichtenberger, 2 Rothe " is unquestionably the 
most distinguished theologian of the School of 
Conciliation, and the most original thinker since 
Schleiermacher," while " he also showed himself 
to be one of the humblest Christians and one of 
the finest formed characters of his age." It is 
not to be w r ondered at therefore, that, when such 
a leader in thought and in influence as Rothe 
declares himself in favor of a judicious use of 
falsehood as a means of good, many are inclined 
to feel that there must be some sound reason for 

^Church History (Macpherson's translation), III., 201. 
2 History of German Theology in the igth Century, p. 492. 



122 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

his course. Yet, on the other hand, the argu- 
ments in favor of falsehood, put forward by even 
such a man, ought to be scrutinized with care, 
in order to ascertain if they are anything more 
than the familiar arguments on the same side 
repeated in varying phrase in all the former 
centuries from Chrysostom to Jeremy Taylor. 

The trouble with Rothe in his treatment of this 
matter 1 is, that he considers the duty of truthful- 
ness merely in its personal and social aspects, 
without any direct reference to the nature, and 
the declared will, of God. Moreover, his peculiar 
definition of a lie is adapted to his view of the 
necessities of the case. He defines a lie as "the 
unloving misuse of speech (or of other recog- 
nized means of communication) to the inten- 
tional deception of our neighbor." In his mind, 
lovelessness toward one's fellow-man is of the 
very essence of the lie, and when one speaks 
falsely in expression of a spirit of love to others, 
it is not necessarily a lie. 

1 Rothe's Theologische Ethik, IVter Band, §g 1064, 1065. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 23 

Rothe does not seem to recognize, in its appli- 
cation to this matter, the great principle that 
there is no true love for man except in con- 
formity to and in expression of love for God ; 
hence that nothing that is in direct violation of 
a primal law of God can be an exhibition of real 
love for one of God's creatures. 

It is true that Rothe assumes that the subject 
of Theological Ethics is an essential branch of 
Speculative Theology ; but in his treatment of 
Special Duties he seems to assume that Society 
rather than God is their background, and there- 
fore the idea of sin as sin does not enter into 
the discussion. His whole argument and his 
conclusions are an illustration of the folly of 
attempting to solve any problem in ethics with- 
out considering the relation to it of God's eternal 
laws, and of the eternal principles which are in- 
volved in the very conception of God. Ethics 
necessarily includes more than social duties, and 
must be considered in the light of duty to God 
as above all. 



124 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

" The intentional deception of our neighbor," 
says Rothe, "by saying what is untrue, is not 
invariably and unqualifiedly a lie. The question 
in this case is essentially one of the purpose. . . . 
It is only in the case where the untruth spoken 
with intent to deceive is at the same time an act 
of unlovingness toward our neighbor, that it is 
a violation of truthfulness as already defined, 
that is, a lie." In Rothe's view, " there are rela- 
tions of men to each other in which [for the 
time being] avowedly the ethical fellowship does 
not exist, although the suspension of this fellow- 
ship must, of course, always be regarded as tempo- 
rary, and this indeed as a matter of duty for at 
least one of the parties. Here there can be no 
mention of love, and therefore no more of the 
want of it." Social duties being in such cases 
suspended, and the idea of any special duty 
toward God not being in consideration, it is quite 
proper, as Rothe sees it, for enemies in war, or 
in private life, to speak falsely to each other. 
Such enemies " naturally have in speech simply 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 25 

a weapon which one may use against the other. 
. . . The duty of speaking the truth cannot even 
be thought of as existing between persons so 
arrayed against each other. . . . However they 
may try to deceive each other, even with the 
help of speech, they do not lie." 

But Rothe goes even farther than this in the 
advocacy of such violations, or abrogations, of 
the law of veracity, as would undermine the very 
foundations of social life, and as would render 
the law against falsehood little more than a 
variable personal rule for limited and selected 
applications, — after the fashion of the American 
humorist who "believed in universal salvation 
if he could pick his men." Rothe teaches that 
falsehood is a duty, not only when it is needful 
in dealing with public or personal enemies, but 
often, also, in dealing with " children, the sick, 
the insane, the drunken, the passionately ex- 
cited, and the morally weak," — and that takes in 
a large share of the human race. He gives 
many illustrations of falsehood supposed to be 



126 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

necessary (where, in fact, they would seem to the 
keen-minded reader to be quite superfluous 1 ); 
and having affirmed the duty of false speaking 
in these cases, he takes it for granted (in a strange 
misconception of the moral sense of mankind) 
that the deceived parties would, if appealed to in 
their better senses, justify the falsehoods spoken 
by mothers in the nursery, by physicians in the 
sick-room, and by the clear-headed sober man 
in his intercourse with the angry or foolish or 
drunken individual. 

"Of course," he says, "such a procedure pre- 
supposes a certain relation of guardianship, on 
the part of the one who speaks untruth, over him 
whom he deceives, and a relative irresponsibility 
on the part of the other, — an incapacity to make 

1 Nitzsch, the most eminent dogmatic theologian among Schleier- 
macher's immediate disciples, denies the possibility of conceiving 
of a case where loving consideration for others, or any other duti- 
ful regard for them, will not attain its end otherwise and more 
truly and nobly than by lying to them, or where " the loving liar 
or falsifier might not have acted still more lovingly and wisely 
without any falsification. . . . The lie told from supposed neces- 
sity or to serve another is always, even in the most favorable cir- 
cumstances, a sign either of a wisdom which is lacking in love and 
truth, or of a love which is lacking in wisdom." 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 12 J 

use of certain truths except to his actual moral 
injury. And in each case all depends on the 
accuracy of this assumption." It is appalling to 
find a man like Rothe announcing a principle 
like this as operative in social ethics ! Every 
man to decide for himself (taking the responsi- 
bility, of course, for his personal decision) whether 
he is in any sense such a guardian of his fellow- 
man as shall make it his duty to speak falsely 
to him in love ! 

Rothe frankly admits that there is no evidence 
that Jesus Christ, while setting an example here 
among men, ever spoke one of these dutiful un- 
truths ; although it certainly would seem that 
Jesus might have fairly claimed as good a right 
to a guardianship of his earthly fellows as the 
average man of nowadays. 1 But this does not 

1 Rothe says on this point : " That the Saviour spoke untruth is 
a charge to whose support only a single passage, John 7:8, can 
be alleged with any show of plausibility. But even here there was 
no speaking of untruth, even if ovk [a disputed reading] be re- 
garded as the right reading." See on this passage Meyer in his 
Commentary \ and Westcott in The Bible Commentary \ 



128 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

restrain Rothe from deliberately advising his 
fellow-men to a different course. 

Rothe names Marheineke, DeWette, von Am- 
nion, Herbart, Hartenstein, Schwartz, Harless, 
and Reinhard, as agreeing in the main with his 
position ; while as opposed to it he mentions 
Kant, Fichte, Krause, Schleiermacher, von Hir- 
scher, Nitzsch, Flatt, and Baumgarten-Crusius. 
But this is by no means a question to be settled 
by votes ; and not one of the writers cited 
by Rothe as of his mind, in this controversy, 
has anything new to offer in defense of a posi- 
tion in such radical disagreement with the teach- 
ings of the Bible, and with the moral sense of 
the race, on this point, as that taken by Rothe. 
In his ignoring of the nature and the will of God 
as the basis of an argument in this matter, and 
in his arbitrary and unauthorized definition of a 
lie (with its inclusion of the claim that the de- 
liberate utterance of a statement known to be 
false, for the express purpose of deceiving the 
one to whom it is spoken, is not necessarily and 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 29 

inevitably a lie), Rothe stands quite pre-eminent. 
Wuttke says, indeed, of Rothe's treatment of 
ethics : " Morality [as he sees it] is an inde- 
pendent something alongside of piety, and rests 
by no means on piety, — is entirely co-ordinate 
to and independent of it." x Yet so great is the 
general influence of Rothe, that various echoes 
of his arguments for falsehoods in love are to 
be found in subsequent English and American 
utterances on Christian ethics. 

Contemporaneous with Richard Rothe, and 
fully his peer in intellectual force and Christ- 
likeness of spirit, stands Isaac August Dorner. 
Dr. Schaff says of him : 2 " Dr. Dorner was one 
of the profoundest and most learned theologians 
of the nineteenth century, and ranks with Schlei- 
ermacher, Neander, Nitzsch, Julius Miiller, and 
Richard Rothe. He mastered the theology of 
Schleiermacher and the philosophy of Hegel, 
appropriated the best elements of both, infused 

1 Wuttke's Christian Ethics (Lacroix's transl.), $ 48. 
2 Supple?nent to Schaff- Hertzog Encyc. of Relig. Know I., p. 58. 

9 



130 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

into them a positive evangelical faith and a his- 
toric spirit;" and as a lecturer, especially " on 
dogmatics and ethics ... he excelled all his 
contemporaries." And to this estimate of him 
Professor Mead adds : l " Even one who knows 
Dorner merely as the theological writer, will in 
his writings easily detect the fine Christian tone 
which characterized the man ; but no one who 
did not personally know him can get a true im- 
pression of the Johannean tenderness and child- 
like simplicity which distinguished him above 
almost any one of equal eminence whom the 
world has ever known." 

When, therefore, it is considered that, after 
Rothe had given his views on veracity to the 
world, Dorner wrote on the same subject, as the 
very last work of his maturest life, a special in- 
terest attaches to his views on this mooted ques- 
tion. And Dorner is diametrically opposed to 
Rothe in this thing. Dorner bases the duty of 
truthfulness on our common membership in 

1 Preface to Dorner's System of Christian Ethics (Am. ed.), p. vii. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 3 1 

Christ, and the love that grows out of such a 
relation. 1 "Truth does not," indeed, "demand 
that all that is in a man should be brought out, 
else it would be a moral duty for him to let also 
the evil that is in him come forth, whereas it is 
his duty to keep it down." But if an untrue 
statement be made with the intention to deceive, 
it is a lie. 

" Are there cases," he asks, " where lying is 
allowable ? Can we make out the so-called 
'white lie' to be morally permissible?" Then 
he takes up the cases of children and the insane, 
who are not entitled to know all the truth, and 
asks if it be right not only to conceal the truth 
but to falsify it, in talking with them. Conceal- 
ment may be a duty, he admits, but he denies 
that falsifying is ever a duty. " How shall ethics 
ever be brought to lay down a duty of lying [of 
' white lying ' ], to recommend evil that good 
may come? The test for us is, whether we 
could ever imagine Christ acting in this way, 

1 See Dorner's System of Christian Ethics (Am. ed.), pp. 487-492. 



132 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

either for the sake of others, or — which would 
be quite as justifiable, since self-love is a moral 
duty — for his own sake." 

As to falsifying to a sick or dying man, he 
says, "we overestimate the value of human life, 
and, besides, we in a measure usurp the place of 
Providence, when w T e believe we may save it by 
committing sin." In other words, Dorner counts 
falsifying w r ith the intention of deceiving, even 
with the best of motives, a lie, and therefore a 
sin — never justifiable. Like Augustine, Dorner 
recognizes degrees of guilt in lies, according to the 
spirit and motive of their telling; but in any event, 
if there be falsehood with the purpose of deceiving, 
it is a sin — to be regretted and repented of. 

Dorner makes a fresh distinction between the 
stratagems of war and lying, which is worthy of 
note. He says that playful fictions, after the 
manner of riddles to be guessed out, are clearly 
allowable. So " in war, too, something like a 
game of this kind is carried on, when by way of 
stratagem some deceptive appearance is pro- 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 3 3 

duced, and a riddle is thus given to the enemy. 
In such cases there is no falsehood; for from the 
conditions of the situation, — whether friendly or 
hostile, — the appearance that is given is con- 
fessedly nothing more than an appearance, and 
is therefore honest. ,, 

The simplicity and clearness of Dorner, in his 
unsophistical treatment of this question, is in 
refreshing contrast with the course of Rothe, — 
who confuses the whole matter in discussion by 
his arbitrary claim that a lie is not a lie, if it be 
told with a good purpose and a loving spirit. 
And the two men are representative disputants 
in this controversy of the centuries, as truly as 
were Augustine and Chrysostom. 

A close friend of Dorner was Hans Lassen 
Martensen, " the greatest theologian of Den- 
mark," and a thinker of the first class, "with 
high speculative endowments, and a considerable 
tincture of theosophical mysticism." l Marten- 

1 See Kurtz's Church History (Macpherson's transl.), III., 201 ; 
Suppletnent to Schaff-Herzog Encyc. of Relig. Knowl., p. 57; 
Johnsons Univ. Cyc, art. "Martensen." 



134 A LIE NEVER J US TIE/ABLE. 

sen's " Christian Ethics " do not ignore God and 
the Bible as factors in any question of practical 
morals under discussion. He characterizes the 
result of such an omission as "a reckoning" of an 
account whose balance has been struck else- 
where; if we bring out another figure, we have 
reckoned wrong." Martensen's treatment of 
the duty of veracity is a remarkable exhibit of 
the workings of a logical mind in full view 
of eternal principles, yet measurably hindered 
and retarded by the heart-drawings of an amiable 
sentiment. He sees the all-dividing line, and 
recognizes the primal duty of conforming to it ; 
yet he feels that it is a pity that such conformity 
must be so expensive in certain imaginary cases, 
and he longs to find some allowance for desir- 
able exceptions. 1 

Martensen gives as large prominence as Rothe 
to love for one's fellow-man ; but he bases that 
love entirely, as Rothe does not, on love for 

1 Martensen's Christian Ethics (individual), (Eng. trans.,) pp. 
205-226. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 35 

Christ. "Only in Christ, and [in] the light 
which, proceeding from him, is poured over 
human nature and all human life, can we love 
men in the central sense, and only then does 
philanthropy receive its deepest religious and 
moral character, when it is rooted in the truth 
of Christ." And as Christ is Truth, those who 
are Christ's must never violate the truth. " ■ Thou 
shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not lie, 
neither in word nor deed; thou shalt neither 
deny the truth, nor give out anything that is not 
truth for truth,' — this commandment must domi- 
nate and penetrate all our life's relations." "Truth 
does not exist for man's sake, but man for the 
sake of the truth, because the truth would reveal 
itself to man, would be owned and testified by 
him." This would seem to be explicit enough 
to shut out the possibility of a justifiable lie ! 

" Yet it does not follow from this," says Marten- 
sen, "that our duty to communicate the truth to 
others is unlimited. . . . 'There is a time to be 
silent, and a time to speak.' No one is bound 



136 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

to say everything to everybody." Here he dis- 
tinguishes between justifiable concealment and 
falsehood. Then he comes to the question 
" whether the so-called * lie of exigency ' can 
ever be justifiable." He runs over the argu- 
ments on both sides, and recalls the centuries of 
discussion on the subject. He thinks that adher- 
ence to the general principle which forbids lying 
would, in certain cases where love prompted to 
falsehood, cause in most minds an inward feel- 
ing that the letter killeth, and that to follow the 
promptings of love were better. Hence he argues 
that "as in other departments there are actions 
which, although from the standpoint of the ideal 
they are to be rejected, yet, from the hardness 
of men's hearts, must be approved and admitted, 
and under this restriction become relatively justi- 
fiable and dutiful actions, simply because greater 
evils are thereby averted; so there is also an 
untruth from exigency that must still be allowed 
for the sake of human weakness." And in his 
opinion "it comes to this, that the question of 



CEXTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 37 

casuistry cannot be solved by general and ab- 
stract directions, but must be solved in an indi- 
vidual, personal way, especially according to the 
stage of moral and religious development and 
ripeness on which the person in question is 
found." 

Having made these concessions, in the realm 
of feeling, to the defenders of the " lie of exi- 
gency," which may be " either uttered from love 
to men, or as defense against men — a defense in 
/which either a justifiable self-love or sympathy 
with others is operative," Martensen proceeds 
to show that everv such falsehood is abnormal 
and immoral. "When we thus maintain," he 
says, "that in certain difficult cases an 'untruth 
from necessity' may occur, which is to be allowed 
for the sake of human weakness, and under the 
given relations may be said to be justified and 
dutiful, we cannot but allow, on the other hand, 
that in every such untruth there is something of 
sin, nay something that needs excuse and for- 
giveness. . . . Certainly even the truth of the 



138 A LIE NE VER JUS TIF I A BLE. 

letter, the external, actual truth, even the formally 
correct, finds its right, the ground of its validity, 
in God's holy order of the world. But by every 
lie of exigency the command is broken, 'Thou 
shalt not bear false witness.' " 

Martensen protests against the claim of Rothe 
that a falsehood spoken in love " is not at all to 
be called a lie, but can be absolutely defended as 
morally normal, and so in no respect needs 
pardon." "' However sharply we may distinguish 
between lie and untruth {mendacium and falsilo- 
quhwi), the untruth in question can never be re- 
solved into the morally normal." And he sug- 
gests that if one had more of wisdom and courage 
and faith, he might be true to the truth in an 
emergency without fear of the consequences. 

" Let us suppose, for instance," he says, "the 
. . . case, where the husband deceives his sick 
spouse from fear that she could not survive the 
news of the death of her child ; who dare main- 
tain that if the man had been able in the right 
way, that is in the power of the gospel, with the 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 39 

wisdom and the comfort of faith, to announce 
the death of the child, a religious crisis might 
not have arisen in her soul, which might have a 
healing and quickening effect upon her bodily 
state ? And supposing that it had even led to 
her death, who dare maintain that that death, if 
it was a Christian death, were an evil, whether 
for the mother herself, or for the survivors ? 

" Or, let us take the woman who, to save her 
chastity, applies the defense of an untruth: who 
dare maintain that if she said the truth to her 
persecutors, but uttered it in womanly heroism, 
with a believing look to God, with the courage, 
the elevation of soul springing from a pure con- 
science, exhibiting to her persecutors the bad- 
ness and unworthiness of their object, she might 
not have disarmed them by that might that lies 
in the good, the just cause, the cause whose de- 
fense and shield God himself will be ? And even 
if she had to suffer what is unworthy, who dare 
maintain that she could not in suffering preserve 
her moral worth ? " 



140 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

Martensen recalls the story of Jeanie Deans, 
in Scott's " Heart of Midlothian," who refuses to 
tell a lie of exigency in order to save her sister's 
life ; yet who, having uttered the truth which 
led to her sister's sentence of death, set herself, 
in faith in God, to secure that sister's pardon, 
and by God's grace compassed it. " Most people 
would at least be disposed to excuse Jeanie 
Deans, and to forgive her, if she had here made 
a false oath, and thereby had afforded her pro- 
tection to the higher truth." And if a loving lie 
of exigency be a duty before God, an appeal to 
his knowledge of the fact is, of course, equally a 
duty. To refuse to appeal to God in witness of 
the truth of a falsehood that is told from a loving 
sense of duty, is to show a lack of confidence in 
God's approval of such an untruth. "But she 
will, can, and dare, for her conscience' sake, not 
do this." 

" But the best thing in this tale," adds Marten- 
sen, " is that it is no mere fiction. The kernel 
of this celebrated romance is actual history." 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 141 

And Sir Walter Scott caused a monument to be 
erected in his garden, with the following inscrip- 
tion, in memory of this faithful truth-lover : 

" This stone was placed by the Author of 
' Waverley ' in memory of Helen Walker, who 
fell asleep in the year of our Lord 1791. This 
maiden practiced in humility all the virtues with 
which fancy had adorned the character that bears 
in fiction the name of Jeanie Deans. She would 
not depart a foot's breadth from the path of truth, 
not even to save her sister's life ; and yet she 
obtained the liberation of her sister from the 
severity of the law by personal sacrifices whose 
greatness was not less than the purity of her 
aims. Honor to the grave where poverty rests 
in beautiful union with truthfulness and sisterly 
love." 

"Who will not readily obey this request," 
adds Martensen, "and hold such a memory in 
honor? . . . Who does not feel himself pene- 
trated with involuntary, most hearty admiration ? " 

In conclusion, in view of all that can be said 



142 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

on either side of the question, Martensen is sure 
that " the lie of exigency itself, which we call 
inevitable, leaves in us the feeling of something 
unworthy, and this unworthiness should, simply 
in following Christ, more and more disappear 
from our life. That is, the inevitableness of the 
lie of exigency will disappear in the same measure 
that an individual develops into a true person- 
ality, a true character. ... A lie of exigency 
cannot occur with a personality that is found in 
possession of full courage, of perfect love and 
holiness, as of the enlightened, all-penetrating 
glance. Not even as against madmen and 
maniacs will a lie of exigency be required, for to 
the word of the truly sanctified personality there 
belongs an imposing commanding power that 
casts out demons. It is this that we see in 
Christ, in whose mouth no guile was found, in 
whom we find nothing that even remotely belongs 
to the category of the exigent lie." 

So it is evident that if one would seek excuse 
for the lie of exigency, in the concessions made 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 43 

by Martensen, he must do so only on the score 
of the hardness of his heart, and the softness of 
his head, as one lacking a proper measure of 
wisdom, of courage, and of faith, to enable him 
to conform to the proper ideal standard of human 
conduct. And even then he must recognize the 
fact that in his weakness he has done something 
to be ashamed of, and to demand repentance. 
Cold comfort that for a decent man ! 

It would seem that personal temperament and 
individual peculiarities had their part in deciding 
a man's attitude toward the question of the un- 
varying duty of veracity, quite as surely as the 
man's recognition of great principles. An illus- 
tration of this truth is shown in the treatment 
of the subject by Dr. Charles Hodge on the one 
hand, and by Dr. James H. Thornwell on the 
other, as representatives, severally, of Calvinistic 
Augustinianism in the Presbyterian Church of 
the United States, in its Northern and Southern 
branches. Starting from the same point of view, 
and agreeing as to the principles involved, these 



144 A LIE NEVER J US TIE/ABLE. 

two thinkers are by no means together in their 
conclusions ; and this, not because of any real 
difference in their processes of reasoning, but 
apparently because of the larger place given by 
the former to the influence of personal feeling, 
as over against the imperative demands of truth. 

Dr. Hodge begins with the recognition and 
asseveration of eternal principles, that can know 
no change or variation in their application to 
this question ; and then, as he proceeds with its 
discussion, he is amiably illogical and good- 
naturedly inconsistent, and he ends in a maze, 
without seeming quite sure as to his own view 
of the case, or eivin^ his readers cause to know 
what should be their view. Dr. Thornwell, on 
the other hand, beginning in the same way, 
proceeds unwaveringly to the close, in logical 
consistency of reasoning ; leaving his readers at 
the last as fully assured as he is as to the appli- 
cation of unchangeable principles to man's life 
and duties. 

No one could state the underlying principles 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 145 

involved in this question more clearly and ex- 
plicitly than does Dr. Hodge at the outset ; * 
and it would seem from this statement that he 
could not be in doubt as to the issue of the dis- 
cussion of this question of the ages. " The 
command to keep truth inviolate belongs to a 
different class [of commands] from those rela- 
ting to the sabbath, to marriage, or to property. 
These are founded on the permanent relations 
of men in the present state of existence. They 
are not in their own nature immutable. But 
truth is at all times sacred, because it is one of 
the essential attributes of God, so that whatever 
militates against or is hostile to truth is in 
opposition to the very nature of God. 

" Truth is, so to speak, the very substratum of 
Deity. It is in such a sense the foundation of 
all the moral perfections of God, that without it 
they cannot be conceived of as existing. Unless 
God really is what he declares himself to be ; 
unless he means what he declares himself to 

1 See Hodge's Systematic Theology, III., 437-463. 
IO 



H6 a lie never justifiable. 

mean; unless he will do what he promises, — the 
whole idea of God is lost. As there is no God 
but the true God, so without truth there is and 
can be no God. As this attribute is the founda- 
tion, so to speak, of the divine, so it is the foun- 
dation of the physical and moral order of the 
universe. . . . There is, therefore, something 
awfully sacred in the obligations of truth. A 
man who violates the truth, sins against the 
very foundation of his moral being. As a false 
god is no god, so a false man is no man ; he can 
never be what man was designed to be ; he 
can never answer the end of his being. There 
can be in him nothing that is stable, trustworthy, 
or good/' 

Here is a platform that would seem to be the 
right standing-place for all and for always. Dr. 
Hodge apparently recognizes its well-defined 
limits and bounds ; yet when he comes to dis- 
cuss the question whether a certain person is, in 
a supposable case, on it, or off it, he does not 
seem so sure as to its precise boundary lines. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION, 1 47 

He begins to waver when he cites Bible inci- 
dents. Recognizing the fact that fables and 
parables, and works of fiction, even though un- 
true, are not falsehoods, he strangely jumps to 
the conclusion that the " intention to deceive " 
is " not always culpable." He immediately fol- 
lows this non-sequitur with a reference to the 
lying Hebrew midwives, 1 and he quotes the 
declaration of God's blessing on them, as if it 
were an approval of their lying, or their false 
speaking with an intention to deceive, instead of 
an approval of their spirit of devotion to God's 
people. 2 

From the midwives he passes to Samuel, sent 
of God to Bethlehem ; 3 and under cover of the 
expressed opinions of others, Dr. Hodge says 
vaguely : " Here, it is said, is a case of inten- 
tional deception commanded. Saul was to be 
deceived as to the object of Samuel's journey to 
Bethlehem." Yet, whoever " said " this was 
guilty of a gratuitous charge of intentional de- 

1 Exod. 1 : 19, 20. 2 Comp. p. 35 f., supra. 3 1 Sam. 16 : 1, 2. 



148 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

ception, against the Almighty. Samuel was di- 
rected of God to speak the truth, so far as he 
spoke at all, while he concealed from others 
that which others had no right to know. 1 It 
would appear, however, throughout this dis- 
cussion, that Dr. Hodge does not perceive the 
clear and important distinction between justifi- 
able concealment from those who have no right 
to a knowledge of the facts, and concealment, 
or even false speaking, with the deliberate inten- 
tion of deceiving those interested. In fact, Dr. 
Hodge does not even mention " concealment," 
as apart from its use for the specific purpose of 
deception. 

Again Dr. Hodge cites the incident of Elisha 
at Dothan 2 as if in illustration of the rightful- 
ness of deception under certain circumstances. 
But in this case it was concealment of facts that 
might properly be concealed, and not the decep- 
tion of enemies as enemies, that Elisha com- 
passed. The Syrians wanted to find Elisha. 

1 Comp. pp. 38-40, supra. 2 2 Kings 6 : 14-20. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 49 

Their eyes were blinded, so that they did not 
recognize him when in his presence. In order 
to teach them a lesson, Elisha told the Syrians 
that they could not find him, or the- city which 
was his home, by their own seeking; but if they 
would follow him he would bring them to the 
man whom they sought. They followed him, 
and he showed himself to them. When their 
eyes were opened in Samaria he would not suffer 
them to be harmed, but had them treated as 
guests, and sent back safely to their king. 

Having cited these three cases, no one of 
which can fairly be made to apply to the argu- 
ment he is pursuing, Dr. Hodge complacently 
remarks : " Examples of this kind of deception 
are numerous in the Old Testament. Some of 
them are simply recorded facts, without any- 
thing to indicate how they were regarded in the 
sight of God ; but others, as in the cases above 
cited, received either directly or by implication 
the divine sanction." 

But Dr. Hodge goes even farther than this. 



150 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

He ventures to suggest that Jesus Christ de- 
ceived his disciples by intimating what was not 
true as to his purpose, in more than one instance. 
" Of our blessed Lord himself it is said in Luke 
24:28, 'He made as though {irpoosiroiEiTo — he 
made a show of) he would have gone further.' 
He so acted as to make the impression on the 
two disciples that it was his purpose to continue 
his journey. (Comp. Mark 6 : 48.) " l This sug- 
gestion of Dr. Hodge's would have been re- 
buked by even Richard Rothe, and would have 
shocked August Dorner. Would Dr. Hodge 
deny that Jesus could have had it in his mind 
to "go further," or to have " passed by " his dis- 
ciples, if they would not ask him to stop ? And 
if this were a possibility, is it fair to intimate that 
a purpose of deception was in his mind, when 
there is nothing in the text that makes that a 
necessary conclusion ? Dr. Hodge, indeed, adds 
the suggestion that " many theologians do not 

1 When Jesus came walking on the sea, toward his disciples in 
their tempest-tossed boat, "he would have passed them by;" but 
their cry of fear drew him toward them. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 5 I 

admit that the fact recorded in Luke 24 : 28 
[which he cites as an illustration of justifiable 
deception by our Lord] involved any intentional 
deception ; " but this fact does not deter him 
from putting it forward in this light. 

In the discussion of the application to emer- 
gencies, in practical life, of the eternal principle 
which he points out at the beginning, Dr. 
Hodge is as far from consistency as in his treat- 
ment of Bible narratives. " It is generally ad- 
mitted," he says, " that in criminal falsehoods 
there must be not only the enunciation or sig- 
nification of what is false, and an intention to 
deceive, but also a violation of some obligation." 
What obligation can be stronger than the obliga- 
tion to be true to God and true to one's self? If, 
as Dr. Hodge declares, " a man who violates the 
truth, sins against the very foundation of his 
moral being," a man would seem to be always 
under an obligation not to violate the truth by 
speaking that which is false with an intention to 
deceive. But Dr. Hodge seems to lose sight of 



152 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

his premises, in all his progress toward his con- 
clusions on this subject. 

" There will always be cases," he continues, 
" in which the rule of duty is a matter of doubt. 
It is often said that the rule above stated applies 
when a robber demands your purse. It is said 
to be right to deny that you have anything of 
value about you. You are not bound to aid 
him in committing a crime ; and he has no right 
to assume that you will facilitate the accomplish- 
ment of his object. This is not so clear. The 
obligation to speak the truth is a very solemn one ; 
and when the choice is left a man to tell a lie or 
lose his money, he had better let his money go. 
On the other hand, if a mother sees a murderer 
in pursuit of her child, she has a perfect right 
to mislead him by any means in her power [in- 
cluding lying ?] ; because the general obligation 
to speak the truth is merged or lost, for the time 
being, in the higher obligation." Yet Dr. 
Hodge starts out with the declaration that the 
obligation " to keep truth inviolate," is highest 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 53 

of all ; that " truth is at all times sacred, because 
it is one of the essential attributes of God ; " 
that God himself cannot " suspend or modify " 
this obligation ; and that man is always under 
its force. And now, strangely enough, he claims 
that in various emergencies " the general obhga 
tion to speak the truth is merged, or lost, for the 
time being, in the higher obligation." The com- 
pletest and most crushing answer to the vicious 
conclusions of Dr. Hodge as to the varying 
claims of veracity, is to be found in the explicit 
terms of his unvaryingly correct premises in the 
discussion. 

Dr. Hodge appears to be conscious of his 
confusion of mind in this discussion, but not 
to be quite sure of the cause of it. As to his 
claim that the general obligation to speak the 
truth may be merged for the time being in a 
" higher obligation," he says : " This principle 
is not invalidated by its possible or actual abuse. 
It has been greatly abused." And he adds, 
farther on, in the course of the discussion : 



154 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

" The question now under consideration is not 
whether it is ever right to do wrong, which is a 
solecism ; nor is the question whether it is ever 
right to lie ; but rather what constitutes a lie." 

Having claimed that a lie necessarily includes 
falsity of statement, an intention to deceive, and 
" a violation of some obligation," Dr. Hodge 
goes on to show that " every lie is a violation 
of a promise," as growing out of the nature of 
human society, where " every man is expected 
to speak the truth, and is under a tacit but bind- 
ing promise not to deceive his neighbor by 
word or act." And, after all this, he is inclined 
to admit that there are cases in which falsehoods 
with the intention of deceiving are not lying, 
and are justifiable. "This, however," he goes 
on to say, " is not always admitted. Augustine, 
for example, makes every intentional deception, 
no matter what the object or what the circum- 
stances, to be sinful." And then, in artless sim- 
plicity, Dr. Hodge concludes : " This would be 
the simplest ground for the moralist to take. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 55 

But as shown above, and as generally admitted, 
there are cases of intentional deception which 
are not criminal. ,, 

According to the principles laid down at the 
start by Dr. Hodge, there is no place for a lie in 
God's service ; but according to the inferences 
of Dr. Hodge, in the discussion of this question, 
there are places where falsehoods spoken with 
intent to deceive are admissible in God's sight 
and service. His whole treatment of this sub- 
ject reminds me of an incident in my army- 
prison life, where this question as a question 
was first forced upon my attention. The Union 
prisoners, in Columbia at that time, received 
their rations from the Confederate authorities, 
and had them cooked in their own way, and at 
their own expense, by an old colored woman 
whom they employed for the purpose. Two of 
us had a dislike for onions in our stew, while the 
others were well pleased with them. So we two 
agreed with old "Maggie," for a small considera- 
tion, to prepare us a separate mess without 



156 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

onions. The next day our mess came by itself. 
We took it, and began our meal with peculiar 
satisfaction ; but the first taste showed us an un- 
mistakable onion flavor in our stew. When old 
Maggie came again, we remonstrated with her 
on her breach of engagement. " Bless your 
hearts, honeys," she replied, " you must have 
some onions in your stew ! " She could not 
comprehend the possibility of a beef stew with- 
out onions, even though she had formally agreed 
to make it. 

Dr. Hodge's premises in the discussion of the 
duty of truthfulness rule out onions ; but his in- 
ferences and conclusions have the odor and the 
taste of onions. He stands on a safe platform to 
begin with ; but he is an unsafe guide when he 
walks away from it. His arguments in this case 
are an illustration of his own declaration : " An 
adept in logic may be a very poor reasoner." 

Dr. Thornwell's " Discourses on Truth " l are a 
thorough treatment of the obligation of veracity 

1 In Thornwell's Collected Writings, II., 451-613. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION, 1 57 



and the sin of lying. He is clear in his defi- 
nitions, marking the distinction between rightful 
concealment as concealment, and concealment 
for the purpose of deception. " There are things 
which men have a right to keep secret," he says, 
" and if a prurient curiosity prompts others offi- 
ciously to pry into them, there is nothing crimi- 
nal or dishonest in refusing to minister to such 
a spirit. Our silence or evasive answers may 
have the effect of misleading. That is not our 
fault, as it was not our design. Our purpose 
was simply to leave the inquirer as nearly as 
possible in the state of ignorance in which we 
found him : it was not to misinform him, but not 
to inform him at all. 

" ' Every man, ' says Dr. Dick, ' has not a 
right to hear the truth when he chooses to 
demand it. We are not bound to answer every 
question which may be proposed to us. In 
such cases we may be silent, or we may give 
as much information as we please, and suppress 
the rest. If the person afterward discover that 



153 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

the information was partial, he has no title 
to complain, because he had no right even to 
what he obtained ; and we are not guilty of 
a falsehood unless we made him believe, by 
something which we said, that the information 
was complete.' ,: " The intention of the speaker, 
and the effect consequent upon it, are very dif- 
ferent things." 

Dr. Thornwell recognizes the fact that the 
moral sense of humanity discerns the invariable 
superiority of truth over falsehood. " If we 
place virtue in sentiment," he says, " there is 
nothing, according to the confession of all man- 
kind, more beautiful and lovely than truth, more 
ugly and hateful than a lie. If we place it in 
calculations of expediency, nothing, on the one 
hand, is more conspicuously useful than truth 
and the confidence it inspires ; nothing, on the 
other, more disastrous than falsehood, treachery, 
and distrust. If there be then a moral principle 
to which, in every form, humanity has given 
utterance, it is the obligation of veracity." " No 



CENTURIES OE DISCUSSION, 1 59 

man ever tells a lie without a certain degree of 
violence to his nature." 

Dr. Thornwell bases this obligation of veracity 
on the nature of God, and on the duty of man 
to conform to the image of God in which he was 
created. " Jesus Christ commends himself to 
our confidence and love/' he says, " on the 
ground of his being the truth ; . . . and makes 
it the glory of the Father that he is the God of 
truth, and the shame and everlasting infamy of 
the prince of darkness that he is the father 
of lies ; " and he adds : " The mind cannot move 
in charity, nor rest in Providence, unless it turn 
upon the poles of truth." " Every man is as 
distinctly organized in reference to truth, as in 
reference to any other purpose." 

In Dr. ThornwelFs view, it is not, as Dr. 
Paley would have it, that " a lie is a breach of 
promise," because as between man and man 
" the truth is expected," according to a tacit un- 
derstanding. As Dr. Thornwell sees it, " we are 
not bound by any other expectations of man but 



160 A LIE NEVER J US TIE/ABLE. 

those which we have authorized ; " and he deems 
it " surprising to what an extent this superficial 
theory of ' contract ' has found advocates among 
divines and moralists," as, for example, Dr. 
Robert South, whom he quotes. 1 " If Dr. Paley 
had pushed his inquiries a little farther," adds 
Thornwell, "he might have accounted for this 
expectation [of truthfulness] which certainly ex- 
ists, independently of a promise, upon principles 
firmer and surer than any he has admitted in the 
structure of his philosophy. He might have seen 
it in the language of our nature proclaiming the 
will of our nature's God." The moral sense 
of mankind demands veracity, and abhors false- 
hood. 

Dr. Thornwell is clear as to the teachings of 
the Bible, in its principles, and in the illustration 
of those principles in the sacred narrative. The 
Bible as he sees it teaches the unvarying duty 
of veracity, and the essential sinfulness of false- 
hood and deception. He repudiates the idea 

1 South's Sermon on Falsehood and Lying, 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. l6l 

that God, in any instance, approved deception, 
or that Jesus Christ practiced it. " When our 
Saviour 'made as though he would have gone 
farther,' he effectually questioned his disciples as 
to the condition of their hearts in relation to the 
duties of hospitality. The angels, in pretending 
that it was their purpose to abide in the street 
all night, made the same experiment on Lot. 
This species of simulation involves no falsehood ; 
its design is not to deceive, but to catechize and 
instruct. The whole action is to be regarded as 
a sign by which a question is proposed, or the 
mind excited to such a degree of curiosity and 
attention that lessons of truth can be success- 
fully imparted." 

And so on through other Bible incidents. Dr. 
Thornweil has no hesitation in distinguishing 
when concealment is right concealment, and when 
concealment is wrong because intended to deceive. 

Exposing the incorrectness of the claim, made 
by Dr. Paley, as by others, that certain specific 
falsehoods are not lies, Dr. Thornweil shows 



ii 



1 62 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

himself familiar with the discussion of this ques- 
tion of the ages in all the centuries ; and he 
moves on with his eye fixed unerringly on the 
polar star of truth, in refreshing contrast with 
the amiable wavering of Dr. Hodge's footsteps. 
" Paley's law," he concludes, ' r would obviously 
be the destruction of all confidence. How much 
nobler and safer is the doctrine of the Scriptures, 
and of the unsophisticated language of man's 
moral constitution, that truth is obligatory on 
its own account, and that he who undertakes to 
signify to another, no matter in what form, and 
no matter what may be the right in the case to 
know the truth, is bound to signify according to 
the convictions of his own mind ! He is not 
always bound to speak, but whenever he does 
speak he is solemnly bound to speak nothing 
but the truth. The universal application of this 
principle would be the diffusion of universal con- 
fidence. It would banish deceit and suspicion 
from the world, and restrict the use of signs to 
their legitimate offices." 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 63 

A later work on Christian Ethics, which ac- 
quires special prominence through its place in 
" The International Theological Library," edited 
by Drs. Briggs and Salmond, is by Dr. New- 
man Smyth. It shows signs of strength in the 
premises assumed by the writer, in accordance 
with the teachings of Scripture and of the best 
moral sense of mankind ; and signs of weakness 
in his processes of reasoning, and in his final 
conclusion, according to the mental methods of 
those who have wavered on this subject, from 
John Chrysostom to Richard Rothe and Charles 
Hodge. 

Dr. Smyth rightly bases Christian ethics on 
the nature and will of God, as illustrated in the 
life and teachings of the divine-human Son of 
God. " A thoroughly scientific ethics must not 
only be adequate to the common moral sense of 
men, but prove true also to the moral conscious- 
ness of the Son of man. No ethics has right to 
claim to be thoroughly scientific, or to offer 
itself as the only science of ethics possible to us 



1 64 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

in our present experience, until it has sought to 
enter into the spirit of Christ, and has brought 
all its analysis and theories of man's moral life 
to the light of the luminous ethical personality 
of Jesus Christ." * 

In his general statement of " the duty of 
speaking the truth," Dr. Smyth is also clear, 
sound, and emphatic. 2 " The law of truthful- 
ness is," he says, " a supreme inward law of 
thought." " The obligation of veracity ... is 
an obligation which every man owes to himself. 
It is a primal personal obligation. Kant was 
profoundly right when he regarded falsehood as 
a forfeiture of personal worth, a destruction of 
personal integrity. . . . Truthfulness is the self- 
consistency of character ; falsehood is a break- 
ing up of the moral integrity. Inward truthful- 
ness is essential to moral growth and personal 
vigor, as it is necessary to the live oak that it 
should be of one fiber and grain from root to 
branch. What a flaw is in steel, what a foreign 

1 Smyth's Christian Ethics, p. 6. 2 Ibid., pp. 386-389. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 65 

substance is in any texture, that a falsehood is 
to the character, — a source of weakness, a point 
where under strain it may break. . . . Truth- 
fulness, then, is due, first by the individual to 
himself as the obligation of personal integrity. 
The unity of the personal life consists in it." 

And in addition to the obligation of veracity 
as a duty to one's self, Dr. Smyth recognizes it 
as a duty to others. He says : " Truthfulness is 
owed to society as essential to its integrity. It 
is the indispensable bond of social life. Men 
can be members one of another in a social 
organism only as they live together in truth. 
Society would fall to pieces without credit ; but 
credit rests on the general social virtue of truth- 
fulness. . . . The liar is rightly regarded as an 
enemy to mankind. A lie is not only an affront 
against the person to whom it is told, but it is 
an offense against humanity." 

If Dr. Smyth had been content to leave this 
matter with the explicit statement of the princi- 
ples that are unvaryingly operative, he would 



1 66 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE, 

have done good service to the world, and nis 
work could have been commended as sound and 
trustworthy in this department of ethics ; but as 
soon as he begins to question and reason on the 
subject, he begins to waver and grow confused ; 
and in the end his inconclusive conclusions are 
pitiably defective and reprehensible. 1 

In considering " the so-called lies of necessity/' 
Dr. Smyth declares with frankness : " Some 
moralists in their supreme regard for truth will 
not admit that under any conceivable circum- 
stances a lie can be deemed necessary, not even 
to save life or to prevent a murderer from ac- 
complishing his fiendish purpose." And then 
over against this he indicates his fatal confusion 
of mind and weakness of reasoning in the sug- 
gestion : " But the sound human understanding, 
in spite of the moralists, will prevaricate, and 
often with great vigor and success, in such cases. 
Who is right, — Kant, or the common moral 
sense ? Which should be followed, — the philo- 

1 Smyth's Christian Ethics, pp. 392-403. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 67 

sophic morality, or the practice of otherwise 
most truthful men ? " 

It is to be noted that, in these two declarations, 
Dr. Smyth puts lying as if it were synonymous 
with prevarication ; else there is no reason for 
his giving the one as over against the other. 
And this indicates a peculiar difficulty in the 
whole course of Dr. Smyth's argument concern- 
ing the " so-called lie of necessity. ,, He essays 
no definition of the " lie." He draws no clear 
line of distinction between a lie, a falsehood, a 
deceit, and a prevarication, or between a justifi- 
able concealment and an unjustifiable conceal- 
ment; and in his various illustrations of his 
position he uses these terms indiscriminately, in 
such a way as to indicate that he knows no 
essential difference between them, or that he 
does not care to emphasize any difference. 

If, in the instance given above, Dr. Smyth 
means that " the sound human understanding, 
in spite of the moralists," will approve lying, or 
falsifying with the intention to deceive, he ought 



1 68 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE, 

to know that the sound human understanding 
will not justify such a course, and that it is 
unfair to intimate such a thing. l And when he 
asks, in connection with this suggestion, " Who 
is right, — Kant, or the common moral sense? 
Which should be followed, the philosophic mo- 
rality, or the practice of otherwise most truthful 
men ? " his own preliminary assertions are his 
conclusive answer. He says specifically, " Kant 
was profoundly right when he regarded falsehood 
as a forfeiture of personal worth, a destruction 
of personal integrity ;" and the " common moral 
sense " of humanity is with Kant in this thing, in 
accordance with Dr. Smyth's primary view of the 
case, as over against the intimation of Dr. Smyth's 
question. As to the suggested " practice of 
otherwise most truthful men " in this thing, — if 
men who generally tell the truth, lie, or speak 
falsely, or deceive, under certain circumstances, 
they are much like men who are generally 
decent, but who occasionally, under temptation, 

1 See pp. 9-32, supra. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 69 

are unchaste or dishonest; they are better ex- 
amples in their uprightness than in their sinning. 
It would seem, indeed, that, notwithstanding 
his sound basis of principles, which recognizes 
the incompatibility of falsehood with true man- 
hood and with man's duty to his fellows, Dr. 
Smyth does not carry with him in his argument 
the idea of the essential sinfulness of a lie, and 
therefore he is continually inconsistent with him- 
self. He says, for example, in speaking of the 
suspension of social duties in war time : " If the 
war is justifiable, the ethics of warfare come at 
once into play. It would be absurd to say that 
it is right to kill an enemy, but not to deceive 
him. Falsehood, it may be admitted, as military 
strategy, is justifiable, if the war is righteous." 

Here, again, is the interchange of the terms 
" deception " and " falsehood/ 5 But unless this is 
an intentional jugglery of words, which is not to 
be supposed, this means that it would be absurd 
to say that it is right to kill an enemy, but not 
right to tell him a falsehood. And nothing 



170 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

could more clearly show Dr. Smyth's error of 
mind on this whole subject than this declaration. 
" Absurd " to claim that while it is right to take 
a man's life in open warfare, in a just cause, it 
would not be right to forfeit one's personal worth, 
and to destroy one's personal integrity, which 
Dr. Smyth says are involved in a falsehood! 
" Absurd " to claim that while God who is the 
author of life can justify the taking of life, he 
cannot justify the sin of lying ! No, no, the 
absurdity of the case is not on that side of the 
line. 

There is no consistency of argument on this 
subject in Dr. Smyth's work. His premises are 
sound. His reasoning is confused and incon- 
sistent. " Not only in some cases of necessity 
is falsehood permissible, but we may recognize 
a positive obligation of love to the concealment 
of the truth," he says. Here again is that ap- 
parent confounding of unjustifiable "falsehood" 
with perfectly proper "concealment of truth." 
He continues : " Other duties which under such 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 171 

circumstances have become paramount, may re- 
quire the preservation of one's own or another's 
life through a falsehood. Not only ought one 
not to tell the truth under the supposed condi- 
tions, but, if the principle assumed be sound, a 
good conscience may proceed to enforce a posi- 
tive obligation of untruthfulness. . . . There are 
occasions when the interests of society and the 
highest motives of Christian love may render it 
much more preferable to discharge the duty of 
self-defense through the humanity of a success- 
ful falsehood, than by the barbarity of a stunning 
blow or a pistol-shot. General benevolence de- 
mands that the lesser evil, if possible, rather than 
the greater, should be inflicted on another/' 

Just compare these conclusions of Dr. Smyth 
with his own premises. " Truthfulness ... is 
an obligation which every man owes to himself. 
It is a primal personal obligation. . . . Truthful- 
ness is the self-consistency of character; false- 
hood is a breaking up of the moral integrity." 
"The liar is rightly regarded as an enemy to 



172 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE, 

mankind. A lie is not only an affront against 
the person to whom it is told, but it is an offense 
against humanity. ,, But what of all that ? " There 
are occasions when the interests of society and 
the highest motives of Christian love may render 
it much more preferable to discharge the duty of 
self-defense through the humanity of a success- 
ful falsehood, than by the barbarity of a stunning 
blow or a pistol-shot. General benevolence de- 
mands that the lesser evil, if possible, rather 
than the greater, should be inflicted on another. ,, 
Better break up one's moral integrity, and fail 
in one's primal personal obligation to himself, — 
better become an enemy of mankind, and com- 
mit an offense against humanity, — than defend 
one's self against an outlaw by the barbarity of 
a stunning blow or a bullet ! 

Would any one suppose from his premises 
that Dr. Smyth looked upon personal truthful- 
ness as a minor virtue, and upon falsehood as a 
lesser vice? Does he seem in those premises 
to put veracity below chastity, and falsehood 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSIOA. 1 73 

below personal impurity ? Yet is he to be under- 
stood as intimating, in this phase of his argu- 
ment, that unchastity, or dishonesty, or any other 
vice than falsehood, is to be preferred, in practice, 
over a stunning blow or a fatal bullet against 
a would-be murderer? 1 The looseness of Dr. 
Smyth's logic, as indicated in this reasoning on 
the subject of veracity, would in its tendency be 
destructive to the safeguards of personal virtue 
and of social purity; and his arguments for the 
lie of exigency are similar to those which are 
put forward in excuse for common sins against 
chastity, by the free-and-easy defenders of a lax 
standard in such matters. " Some moralists/' 
says the average young man of the world, " in 
their extreme regard for personal purity, will 
not admit that any act of unchastity is necessary, 
even to protect one's health, or as an act of love. 
But the men of virility and strong feeling will let 
down occasionally at this point, in spite of the 
moralists. Which should be followed, — the 

1 See Augustine's words on this point, quoted at p. 100, supra. 



174 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

philosophic morality, or the practice of many 
otherwise decent and very respectable men ? " 

Confounding, as always, a wise and right con- 
cealment of truth with actual falsehood, Dr. 
Smyth says of the duty of a teacher in the 
matter of imparting truth to a pupil according 
to the measure of the pupil's ability to receive 
it : " An occasional friendly use of truth as a 
crash towel may be wholesome ; but ordinarily 
there is a more excellent way." That is a count- 
ing of truth precious, with a vengeance ! 

Dr. Smyth seems inclined to accept in the 
main the conclusions, on this whole subject, of 
Rothe, but without Rothe's measure of con- 
sistency in the argument. Rothe starts wrong, 
and of course ends wrong. Dr. Smyth, like Dr. 
Hodge, starts right and ends wrong. No sorer 
condemnation of Dr. Smyth's position can be 
made, than by the simple presentation of his 
own review of his own argument, when he says : 
" To sum up, then, what has been said concern- 
ing the so-called lies of necessity, the principle 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. I?$ 

to be applied with wisdom is simply this : give 
the truth always to those who in the bonds of 
humanity have the right to the truth ; conceal it 
or falsify it only when it is unmistakably evident 
that the human right to the truth from others 
has been forfeited, or temporarily is held in 
abeyance by sickness, weakness, or some crimi- 
nal intent : do not in any case prevaricate, unless 
you can tell the necessary falsehood deliberately 
and positively, from principle, with a good con- 
science void of offense toward men, and sincere 
in the sight of God." What says the moral 
sense of humanity to such a position as that ? 

As over against the erroneous claim, made by 
Richard Rothe, and Newman Smyth, and others, 
that the " moral sense " of mankind is at variance 
with the demands of " rigid moralists/' in regard 
to the unjustifiableness of falsehood, it is of 
interest to note the testimony of strong thinkers, 
who have written on this subject with the fullest 
freedom, from the standpoint of speculative 
philosophy, rather than of exclusively Christian 



176 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

ethics. For example, James Martineau, while a 
Christian philosopher, discusses the question of 
veracity as a philosopher, rather than as a Chris- 
tian, in his " Types of Ethical Theory;" 1 and he 
insists that " veracity is strictly natural, that is, it 
is implied in the very nature which leads us to 
intercommunion in speech." 

As he sees it, a man is treacherous to himself 
who speaks falsely at any time to any one, and 
the man's moral sense recoils from his action 
accordingly. Dr. Martineau says : " It is per- 
haps, the peculiar treachery of this process which 
fixes upon falsehood a stamp of meanness quite 
exceptional ; and renders it impossible, I think, 
to yield to its inducements, even in cases sup- 
posed to be venial, without a disgust little dis- 
tinguishable from compunction. This must have 
been Kant's feeling when he said : 'A lie is the 
abandonment, or, as it were, the annihilation of 
the dignity of man.' " 

Dr. Martineau is not so rigid a moralist but 

1 Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, II., 255-265. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION, 1 77 

that he is ready to agree with those easy-going 
theologians who find a place for exceptional 
falsehoods in their reasoning ; yet he is so true 
a man in his moral instincts that his nature re- 
coils from the results of such reasoning. " After 
all," he says, " there is something in this prob- 
lem which refuses to be thus laid to rest; and in 
treating it, it is hardly possible to escape the un- 
easiness of a certain moral inconsequence. If we 
consult the casuist of Common Sense he usually 
tells us that, in theory, Veracity can have no ex- 
ceptions ; but that, in practice, he is brought 
face to face with at least a few ; and he cheer- 
fully accepts a dispensation, when required, at 
the hands of Necessity. 

" I confess rather to an inverse experience. The 
theoretic reasons for certain limits to the rule of 
veracity appear to me unanswerable ; nor can I 
condemn any one who acts in accordance with 
them. Yet when I place myself in a like position, 
at one of the crises demanding a deliberate lie, 

an unutterable repugnance returns upon me, and 

12 



178 A LIE NE VER JUS TIF I A BLE. 

makes the theory seem shameful. If brought to 
the test, I should probably act rather as I think 
than as I feel, 1 without, however, being able to 
escape the stab of an instant compunction and the 
secret wound of a long humiliation. Is this the 
mere weakness of superstition ? It may be so. 
But may it not also spring from an ineradicable 
sense of a common humanity, still leaving social 
ties to even social aliens, and, in the presence of 
an imperishable fraternal unity, forbidding to 
the individual of the moment the proud right 
of spiritual ostracism ? . . . 

" How could I ever face the soul I had de- 
ceived, when perhaps our relations are reversed, 
and he meets my sins, not with self-protective 
repulse, but with winning love ? And if with 
thoughts like these there also blends that inward 
reverence for reality which clings to the very 
essence of human reason, and renders it incredi- 
ble, a priori, that falsehood should become an 

1 No, a man who feels like that would be true in the hour of 
temptation. His doubt of himself is only the tremulousness of 
true courage. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 79 

implement of good, it is perhaps intelligible how 
there may be an irremediable discrepancy be- 
tween the dioptric certainty of the understanding 
and the immediate insight of the conscience : not 
all the rays of spiritual truth are refrangible ; 
some there are beyond the intellectual spectrum, 
that wake invisible response, and tremble in the 
dark." 

Dr. Martineau's definition of right and wrong 
is this : l " Every action is right, which, in pres- 
ence of a lower principle, follows a higher : every 
action is wrong, which, in presence of a higher 
principle, follows a lower;" and his moral sense 
will not admit the possibility of falsehood being 
at any time higher than truth, or of veracity ever 
being lower than a lie. 

Professor Thomas Fowler, of the University 
of Oxford, writing as a believer in the gradual 
evolution of morals, and basing his philosophy 
on experience without any recognition of a priori 
principles, is much more nearly in accord, at 

1 Types of Ethical Theory, II., 270. 



180 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

this point, 1 with Martineau, than with Rothe, 
Hodge, and Smyth. Although he is ready to 
concede that a lie may, theoretically, be justifi- 
able, he is sure that the moral sense of mankind 
is, at the present state of average development, 
against its propriety. Hence, he asserts that, 
even when justice might deny an answer to an 
improper question, " outside the limits of justice, 
and irrespectively of their duty to others, many 
persons are often restrained, and quite rightly 
so, from returning an untruthful or ambiguous 
answer by purely self-regarding feelings. They 
feel that to give an untruthful answer, even 
under such circumstances as I have supposed, 
would be to burden themselves with the subse- 
quent consciousness of cowardice or lack of self- 
respect. And hence, whatever inconvenience or 
annoyance it may cost them, they tell the naked 
truth, rather than stand convicted to themselves 
of a want of courage or dignity." 

" Veracity, though this was by no means 

1 Principles of Morals, II., 159-161. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. l8l 

always the case," Professor Fowler continues, 
"has become the point of honor in the upper 
ranks of modern civilized societies, and hence it 
is invested with a sanctity which seems to attach 
to no other virtue ; and to the uninstructed 
conscience of the unreflective man, the duty of 
telling the truth appears, of all duties, to be the 
only duty which never admits of any exceptions, 
from the unavoidable conflict with other duties." 
He ranges the moral sense of the " upper ranks 
of modern civilized societies," and "the unin- 
structed conscience of the unreflective man," 
against any tolerance of the " lie of necessity," 
leaving only the locality of Muhammad's coffin 
for those who are arrayed against the rigid 
moralists on this question. 

While he admits the theoretical possibility of 
the " lie of necessity," Professor Fowler con- 
cludes as to its practical expediency : " Without 
maintaining that there are no conceivable cir- 
cumstances under which a man will be justified 
in committing a breach of veracity, it may at 



I 8 2 A LIE N FA ER JUS TIF I A BLE. 

least be said that, in the lives of most men, there 
is no case likely to occur in which the greater 
social good would not be attained by the ob- 
servation of the general rule to tell the truth, 
rather than by the recognition of an exception in 
favor of a lie, even though that lie were told 
for purely benevolent reasons." That is nearer 
right than the conclusions of many an incon- 
sistent intuitionist ! 

Leslie Stephen, a consistent agnostic, and a 
believer in the slow evolution of morals, in his 
" Science of Ethics," 1 naturally holds, like Her- 
bert Spencer, to the gradual development of the 
custom of truthfulness, as a necessity of society. 2 
The moral sense of primitive man, as he sees it, 
might seem to justify falsehood to an enemy \ 
rather than, as Rothe and Smyth would claim, 
to those who are wards of love. In illustration 
of this he says : " The obligation to truthfulness 
is [primarily] limited to relations with members 

1 Leslie Stephen's Science of Ethics, pp. 202-209. 
2 See pp. 26-32, supra. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 83 

of the same tribe or state ; and, more generally, 
it is curious to observe how a kind of local or 
special morality is often developed in regard to 
this virtue. The schoolboy thinks it a duty 
to his fellows to lie to his master, the merchant 
to his customer, and the servant to his employer ; 
and, inversely, the duty is often recognized as 
between members of some little clique or pro- 
fession, as soon as it is seen to be important for 
their corporate interest, even at the expense of 
the wider social organization. There is honor 
among thieves, both of the respectable and other 
varieties. " 

But Leslie Stephen sees that, in the progress 
of the race, the importance of veracity has come 
to a recognition, " in which it differs from the 
other virtues." While the law of marriage may 
vary at different periods, " the rule of truthful- 
ness, on the other hand, seems to possess the 
a priori quality of a mathematical axiom. . . . 
Truth, in short, being always the same, truthful- 
ness must be unvarying. Thus, ' Be truthful ' 



1 84 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

means, ' Speak the truth whatever the conse- 
quences, whether the teller or the hearer receives 
benefit or injury.' And hence, it is inferred, 
truthfulness implies a quality independent of the 
organization of the agent or of society." While 
Mr. Stephen would himself find a place for the 
" lie of necessity" under conceivable circum- 
stances, he is clear-minded enough to perceive 
that the moral sense of the civilized world is 
opposed to this view; and in this he is nearer 
correct than those who claim the opposite. 

It is true that those who seek an approbation 
of their defense of falsehoods which they deem 
a necessity, assume, without proof, their agree- 
ment with the moral sense of the race. But it 
is also true that there stands opposed to their 
theory the best moral sense of primitive man, 
as shown in a wide area of investigation, and 
also of thinkers all the way up from the lowest- 
moral grade to the most rigorous moralists, in- 
cluding intuitionists, utilitarians, and agnostics. 
However deficient may be the practice of erring 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 85 

mortals, the ideal standard in theory, is veracity, 
and not falsehood. 

As to the opinions of purely speculative 
philosophers, concerning the admissibility of the 
" lie of necessity," they have little value except 
as personal opinions. This question is one that 
cannot be discussed fairly without relation to 
the nature and law of God. It is of interest, 
however, to note that a keen mind like Kant's 
insists that " the highest violation of the duty 
owed by man to himself, considered as a moral 
being singly (owed to the humanity subsisting 
in his person), is a departure from truth, or 
lying." 1 And when a man like Fichte, 2 whom 
Carlyle characterizes as "that cold, colossal, 
adamantine spirit, standing erect like a Cato 
Major among degenerate men ; fit to have been 
the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed 
of beauty and virtue in the groves of Academe," 
declares that no measure of evil results from 

1 See Semple's Kant's Metaphysic of Ethics, p. 267. 
2 See Martensen's Christiaii Ethics {Individual), $ 97. 



1 86 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE, 

truth-speaking would induce him to tell a lie, a 
certain moral weight attaches to his testimony. 
And so with all the other philosophers. No 
attempt at exhaustiveness in their treatment is 
made in this work. But the fullest force of any 
fresh argument made by them in favor of occa- 
sional lying is recognized so far as it is known. 

One common misquotation from a well-known 
philosopher, in this line, is, however, sufficiently 
noteworthy for special mention here. Jacobi, 
in his intense theism, protests against the un- 
qualified idealism of Fichte, and the indefinite 
naturalism of Schelling ; and, in his famous 
Letter to Fichte, 1 he says vehemently: "But 
the Good what is it ? I have no answer if there 
be no God. As to me, this world of phenomena 
— if it have all its truth in these phenomena, 
and no more profound significance, if it have 
nothing beyond itself to reveal to me — be- 
comes a repulsive phantom, in whose presence 
I curse the consciousness which has called 

1 F. H. Jacobi's Werke, Illter Band, pp. 36-38. 



CENTURIES OE DISCUSSION. 1 87 

it into existence, and I invoke against it annihi- 
lation as a deity. Even so, also, everything 
that I call good, beautiful, and sacred, turns 
to a chimera, disturbing my spirit, and rending 
the heart out of my bosom, as soon as I assume 
that it stands not in me as a relation to a higher, 
real Being, — not a mere resemblance or copy of 
it in me; — when, in fine, I have within me an 
empty and fictitious consciousness only. I admit 
also that I know nothing of * the Good per se y ' or 
1 the True per se y ' that I even have nothing but a 
vague notion of what such terms stand for. I 
declare that it revolts me when people seek to 
obtrude upon me the Will which wills nothing, 
this empty nut of independence and freedom in 
absolute indifference, and accuse me of atheism, 
the true and proper godlessness, because I show 
reluctance to accept it." 

Insisting thus that he must have the will of a 
personal God as a source of obligation to con- 
form to the law of truth and virtue, and that 
without such a source no assumed law can be 



1 88 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

binding on him, Jacobi adds: "Yes I am the 
atheist, and the godless man who, in opposition 
to the Will that wills nothing, will lie as the 
lying Desdemona lied ; will lie and deceive as 
did Pylades in passing himself off as Orestes; 
will commit murder as did Timoleon ; break law 
and oath as did Epaminondas, as did John De 
Witt; will commit suicide as did Otho ; will 
undertake sacrilege with David ; yes and rub 
ears of corn on the Sabbath merely because I 
am an hungered, and because the law is made 
for man and not man for the law." 

Jacobi's reference, in this statement, to lying 
and other sins, w r as taken by itself as the motto 
to one of Coleridge's essays; 1 and this seems to 
have given currency to the idea that Jacobi was 
in favor of lying. Hence he is unfairly cited 
by ethical writers 2 as having declared himself 
for the lie of expediency; whereas the context 
shows that that is not his position. He is sim- 

1 Coleridge's Works: The Friend, Essay XV. 
2 See, for instance, Martensen's Christian Ethics (Individual), § 97. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 89 

ply stating the logical consequences 01 a philoso- 
phy which he repudiates. 

Among the false assumptions that are made 
by many of the advocates of the " lie of ne- 
cessity " is the claim that in war, in medical 
practice, and in the legal profession, the propriety 
of falsehood and deceit, in certain cases, is recog- 
nized and admitted on all sides. While the 
baselessness of this claim has been pointed out, 
incidentally, in the progress of the foregoing dis- 
cussion, 1 it would seem desirable to give par- 
ticular attention to the matter in a fuller treat- 
ment of it, before closing this record of centuries 
of discussion. 

It is not true that in civilized warfare there is 
an entire abrogation, or suspension, of the duty 
of truthfulness toward an enemy. There is no 
material difference between war and peace in this 
respect. Enemies, on both sides, understand 
that in warfare they are to kill each other if they 
can, by the use of means that are allowable as 

1 See pp. 71-75, supra. 



190 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

means ; but this does not give them the privilege 
of doing what is utterly inconsistent with true 
manhood. 

Enemies are not bound to disclose their plans 
to each other. They have a duty of concealing 
those plans from each other. Hence, as Dorner 
has suggested, they proffer to each other's sight 
only appearances, not assurances; and it is for 
each to guess out, if he can, the real purpose of 
the other, below the appearance. An enemy 
can protect his borders by pitfalls, or torpedoes, 
or ambushes, carefully concealed from sight, in 
order to guard the life of his own people by de- 
stroying the life of his opponents, or may make 
demonstrations, before the enemy, of possible 
movements, in order to conceal his purposed 
movements ; but in doing this he does only 
what is allowable, in effect, in time of peace. 1 

1 Several of the illustrations of Oriental warfare in the Bible 
record are to be explained in accordance with this principle. Thus 
with the ambush set by Joshua before Ai (Josh. 8 : 1-26) : the 
Canaanites did not read aright the riddle of the Israelitish com- 
mander, and they suffered accordingly. Yet Dr. Dabney ( Theology, 
p. 424) cites this as an instance of an intentional deception which 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 191 

A similar method 01 mystifying his opponent 
is adopted by the base-ball pitcher in his demon- 
strations with the ball before letting it drive at 
the batsman. The batsman holds himself re- 
sponsible for reading the riddle of the pitcher's 
motions. Yet the pitcher is forbidden to deceive 
the batsman by a feint of delivering the ball 
without delivering it. 

If an enemy attempts any communication with 
his opponent, he has no right to lie to, or to 
deceive him. He must not draw him into an 
ambuscade, or over concealed torpedoes, on the 
plea of desiring an amicable interview with him ; 
and his every word given to an enemy must be 
observed sacredly as an obligation of truth. 

was innocent in God's sight. And again, in the case recorded at 
2 Kings 7 : 6, where the Lord " made the host of the Syrians to 
hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a 
great host, . . . and they arose and . . . fled for their life," 
thinking that Hittite and Egyptian forces were approaching, it is 
evident that God simply caused the Syrians, who were contending 
with his people, to feel that they were fighting hopelessly against 
God's cause. The impression God made on their minds was a 
correct one. He could bring chariots and horses as a great host 
against them. They did well to realize this fact. But the Syrians' 
explanation of this impression was incorrect in its details. 



192 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

Even before the Christian era, and centuries 
prior to the time when Chrysostom was confused 
in his mind on this point, Cicero wrote as to the 
obligations of veracity upon enemies in time of 
war, and in repudiation of the idea that warfare 
included a suspension of all moral relations 
between belligerents during active hostilities. 1 

He said : " The equities of war are prescribed 
most carefully by the heralds' law {lex fetialis) 
of the Roman people," and he w T ent on to give 
illustrations of the recognized duty of com- 
batants to keep within the bounds of mutual 
social obligations. " Even where private persons, 
under stress of circumstances, have made any 
promise to the enemy," he said, " they should 
observe the exactest good faith, as did Regulus, 
in the first Punic war, when taken prisoner and 
sent to Rome to treat of the exchange of prison- 
ers, having sworn that he would return. First, 
when he had arrived, he did not vote in the 
Senate for the return of the prisoners. Then, 

1 Cicero's De OJiciis, I., 12, 13. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 93 

when his friends and kinsmen would have de- 
tained him, he preferred to go back to punish- 
ment rather than evade his faith plighted to the 
enemy. 

" In the second Punic war also, after the battle 
of Cannse, of the ten Romans whom Hannibal 
sent to Rome bound by an oath that they would 
return unless they obtained an agreement for 
the redemption of prisoners, the censors kept 
disfranchised those who perjured themselves, 
making no exception in favor of him who had 
devised a fraudulent evasion of his oath. For 
when by leave of Hannibal he had departed 
from the camp, he went back a little later, on 
pretense of having forgotten something. Then 
departing again from the camp [without renew- 
ing his oath], he counted himself set free from 
the obligation of his oath. And so he was 
free so far as the words went, but not so in 
reality ; for always in a promise we must have 
regard to the meaning of our words, rather than 
to the words themselves." 

13 



194 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

In modern times, when Lord Clive, in India, 
acted on the theory that an utter lack of veracity 
and good faith on the part of an enemy justified 
a suspension of all moral obligations toward him, 
and practiced deceit on a Bengalee by the name 
of Omichund, in order to gain an advantage over 
the Nabob of Bengal, he was condemned by the 
moral sense of the nation for which he thus acted 
deceitfully; and, in spite of the specious arguments 
put forth by his partisan defenders, his name is 
infamous because of this transaction. 

" English valor and English intelligence have 
done less to extend and preserve our Oriental 
empire than English veracity," says Lord Ma- 
caulay. " All that we could have gained by 
imitating the doublings, the evasions, the fictions, 
the perjuries, which have been employed against 
us, is as nothing when compared with what we 
have gained by being the one power in India on 
whose word reliance can be placed. No oath 
which superstition can devise, no hostage how- 
ever precious, inspires a hundredth part of the 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 95 

confidence which is produced by the ' yea, yea/ 
and the ' nay, nay/ of a British envoy.'' There- 
fore it is that Lord Macaulay is sure that " look- 
ing at the question of expediency in the lowest 
sense of the word, and using no arguments but 
such as Machiavelli might have employed in his 
conferences with Borgia, we are convinced that 
Clive was altogether in the w r rong, and that he 
committed, not merely a crime but a blunder." 1 
So again when an English vessel of war made 
signals of distress, off the coast of France, dur- 
ing the war with Napoleon, and thereby deceived 
men from the enemy into coming to its relief, 
and then held them as prisoners, the act was 
condemned by the moral sense of the world. 
As Woolsey says, in his " International Law:" 2 
" Breach of faith between enemies has always 
been strongly condemned, and that vindication 
of it is worthless w T hich maintains that, without 
an express or tacit promise to our enemy, we 
are not bound to keep faith with him." 

1 Macaulay's Essay on Lord Clive. 2 Sect. 133, p. 213. 



196 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

Tlu theologian who assumes that the duty of 
veracity is suspended between enemies in war 
time is ignorant of the very theory of civilized 
warfare; or else he fails to distinguish between 
justifiable concealment, by the aid of methods 
of mystifying, and falsehood which is never 
justifiable. And that commander who should 
attempt to justify falsehood and bad faith in 
warfare on the ground that it is held justifiable 
in certain works on Christian ethics, would 
incur the scorn of the civilized world for his 
credulity; and he would be told that it is absurd 
to claim that because he is entitled to kill a man 
in warfare it must be fair to lie to him. 

In the treatment of the medical profession, 
many writers on ethics have been as unfair, as 
in their misrepresentation of the general moral 
sense with reference to warfare. They have 
spoken as if " the ethics of the medical pro- 
fession " had a recognized place for falsehood 
in the treatment of the sick. But this assump- 
tion is only an assumption. There are physi- 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 1 97 

cians who will lie, and there are physicians who 
will not lie ; and in each case the individual 
physician acts in this matter on his own responsi- 
bility : he has no code of professional ethics 
justifying a lie on his part as a physician, when 
it would not be justifiable in a layman. 

Concealment of that which he has a right to 
conceal, is as clearly a duty, in many a case, on 
the part of a physician, as it is on the part of 
any other person ; but falsehood is never a legiti- 
mate, or an allowable, means of concealment by 
physician or layman. As has been already 
stated l if it be once known that a physician is 
ever ready to speak words of cheer to a patient 
falsely, that physician is measurably deprived 
of the possibility of encouraging a patient by 
truthful words of cheer when he would gladly 
do so. And physicians would probably be sur- 
prised to know how generally they are estimated 
in the community according to their reputation 
in this matter. One is known as a man who 

1 See p. 75 f., supra. 



198 A LIE NE VER JUS TIF I A BLE> 

will speak falsely to his patients as a means of 
encouragement, while another is known as a man 
who will be cautious about giving his opinion 
concerning chances of recovery, but who will 
never tell an untruth to a patient or to any other 
person. But in no case can a physician claim 
that the ethics of his profession as a profession 
justify him in a falsehood to any person^— patient 
or no patient. 

A distinguished professor in one of the promi- 
nent medical colleges of this country, in denying 
the claim of a writer on ethics that it may be- 
come the duty of a physician to deceive his 
patient as a means of curing him, declares that 
a physician acting on this theory "will not be 
found in accord with the best and the highest 
medical teaching of the present day;" and he 
goes on to say: 1 "In my profession to-day, the 
truth properly presented, we have found, carries 
with it a convincing and adjusting element which 
does not fail to bring the afflicted person to that 

1 In a personal communication to the author. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 199 

condition of mind that is most conducive to his 
physical well-being, and let me add also, I be- 
lieve, to his spiritual welfare." This statement 
was made in connection with the declaration that 
in the hospital which was in his charge it is not 
deemed right or wise to deceive a patient as to 
any operation to be performed upon him. And 
there are other well-known physicians who testify 
similarly as to the ethics of their profession. 

An illustration of the possible good results 
of concealing an unpleasant fact from a sick 
person, that has been a favorite citation all along 
the centuries with writers on ethics who would 
justify emergency falsehoods, is one which is 
given in his correspondence by Pliny the younger, 
eighteen centuries ago. 1 

Caecinna Paetus and his son "were both at the 
same time attacked with what seemed a mortal 
illness, of which the son died. . . . His mother 
[Arria] managed his funeral so privately that 

1 Epistles of Pliny the Younger, Book III., Epis. 16. Pliny to 
Nepos. 



200 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

Paetus did not know of his death. Whenever 
she came into his bedchamber, she pretended that 
her son was better, and, as often as he inquired 
after his health, would answer that he had rested 
well, or had eaten with an appetite. When she 
found she could no longer restrain her grief, but 
her tears were gushing out, she w r ould leave the 
room, and, having given vent to her passion, re- 
turn again with dry eyes and a serene counte- 
nance, as if she had dismissed every sentiment 
of sorrow." 

This Roman matron also committed suicide, 
as an encouragement to her husband whom she 
desired to have put an end to his own life, when 
he was likely to have it taken from him by the 
executioner ; and Pliny commends her noble- 
ness of conduct in both cases. It is common 
among ethical writers, in citing this instance in 
favor of lying, to say nothing about the suicide, 
and to omit mention of the fact that the mother 
squarely lied, by saying that her dead boy had 
eaten a good breakfast, instead of employing 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 201 

language that might have been the truth as iar 
as it went, while it concealed that portion of the 
truth which she thought it best to conceal. It 
is common to quote her as simply saying of her 
son "He is better;" 1 quite a different version 
from Pliny's, and presenting a different issue. 

It was perfectly proper for that mother to con- 
ceal the signs of her sorrow from her sick hus- 
band, who had no right to know the truth con- 
cerning matters outside of his sick-room at such 
a time. And if, indeed, she could say in all sin- 
cerity, as expressive of her feelings in the death 
of her son, by the will of the gods, " He is 
better," it would have been possible for her to 
feel that she was entitled to say that as the truth, 
and not as a falsehood; and in that case she 
would not have intended a deceit, but only a 
concealment. But when, on the other hand, she 
told a deliberate lie — spoke falsely in order to 
deceive — she committed a sin in so doing, and 

1 See Newman Smyth's Christian Ethics, p. 395, where this case 
is stated with vagueness of phrase, and as thus stated is approved. 



202 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

her sin was none the less a sin because it resulted 
in apparent good to her husband. An illustra- 
tion does not overturn a principle, but it may 
misrepresent it. 

Another illustration, on the other side of the 
case, is worth citing here. Victor Hugo pic- 
tures, in his Lcs Miser ablest a sister of charity 
adroitly concealing facts from a sick person in a 
hospital, while refusing to tell a falsehood even 
for the patient's good. " Never to have told a 
falsehood, never to have said for any advantage, 
or even indifferently, a thing which was not 
the truth, the holy truth, was the characteristic 
feature of Sister Simplice." She had taken the 
name of Simplice through special choice. " Sim- 
plice, of Sicily, our readers will remember, is the 
saint who sooner let her bosom be plucked out 
than say she was a native of Segeste, as she was 
born at Syracuse, though the falsehood would 
have saved her. Such a patron saint suited this 
soul." And in speaking of Sister Simplice, as 

i Book VII. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 203 

never having told even " a white lie," Victor 
Hugo quotes a letter from the Abbe Sicard, to 
his deaf-mute pupil Massieu, on this point : 
" Can there be such a thing as a white lie, an 
innocent lie? Lying is the absolute of evil. 
Lying a little is not possible. The man who 
lies tells the whole lie. Lying is the face of the 
fiend ; and Satan has two names, — he is called 
Satan and Lying." Victor Hugo the romancer 
would seem to be a safer guide, so far, for the 
physician or the nurse in the sick-room, than 
Pliny the rhetorician, or Rothe the theologian. 1 
A well-known physician, in speaking to me 
of this subject, said: "It is not so difficult to 
avoid falsehood in dealing with anxious patients 
as many seem to suppose. Tact, as well as 
principle, will do a good deal to help a physician 
out, in an emergency. I have never seen any 
need of lying, in my practice." And yet another 
physician, who had been in a widely varied 

1 Yet Victor Hugo afterwards represents even Sister Simplice as 
lying unqualifiedly, when sorely tempted — although not in the 
sick-room. 



204 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

practice for forty years, said that he had never 
found it necessary to tell a lie to a patient ; 
although he thought he might have done so if 
he had deemed it necessary to save a patient's 
life. In other words, while he admitted the 
possible justification of an "emergency lie." he 
had never found a first-class opening for one in 
his practice. And he added, that he knew very 
well that if he had been known to lie to his 
patients, his professional efficiency, as well as his 
good name, would have suffered. Medical men 
do not always see, in their practice, the sup- 
posed advantages of lying, which have so large 
prominence in the minds of ethical writers. 

Another profession, which is popularly and 
wrongly accused of having a place for the lie 
in its system of ethics, is the legal profession. 
Whewell refers to this charge in his " Elements 
of Morality" (citing Paley in its support). He 
says : " Some moralists have ranked with the 
cases in which convention supersedes the general 
rule of truth, an advocate asserting the justice, or 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 205 

his belief in the justice, of his client's cause." But 
as to an advocate's right in this matter, Whewell 
says explicitly : " If, in pleading, he assert his belief 
that his cause is just, when he believes it unjust, 
he offends against truth ; as any other man would 
do who, in like manner, made a like assertion." 1 
Chief-Justice Sharswood, of Pennsylvania, in 
his standard work on " Legal Ethics," cites this 
opinion of Whewell with unqualified approval ; 
and, in speaking for the legal profession, he says : 
" No counsel can with propriety and good con- 
science express to court or jury his belief in the 
justice of his client's cause, contrary to the fact. 
Indeed, the occasions are very rare in which he 
ought to throw the weight of his private opinion 
into the scales in favor of the side he has es- 
poused." Calling attention to the fact that the 
official oath of an attorney, on his admission to 
the bar, in the state of Pennsylvania, includes the 
specific promise to " use no falsehood," he says : 
" Truth in all its simplicity — truth to the court, 

1 Whewell's Elements of Morality, $ 400. 



2o6 A LIE NEVER JUS TIE/ABLE. 

client, and adversary — should be indeed the polar 
star of the lawyer. The influence of only slight 
deviations from truth upon professional charac- 
ter is very observable. A man may as well be 
detected in a great as a little lie. A single dis- 
covery, among professional brethren, of a failure 
of truthfulness, makes a man the object of dis- 
trust, subjects him to constant mortification, and 
soon this want of confidence extends itself 
beyond the Bar to those who employ the Bar. 
That lawyer's case is truly pitiable, upon the 
escutcheon of whose honesty or truth rests the 
slightest tarnish." 1 

As illustrative of the carelessness with which 
popular charges against an entire profession are 
made the basis of reflections upon the ethical 
standard of that profession, the comments of 
Dr. Hodge on this matter are worthy of par- 
ticular notice. In connection with his assertion 
that " the principles of professional men allow 
of many things which are clearly inconsistent 

1 Sharswood's Essay on Professional Ethics, pp. 57, 99, 102, 167 f. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 20/ 

with the requirements of the ninth command- 
ment," he says: "Lord Brougham is reported 
to have said, in the House of Lords, that an 
advocate knows no one but his client. He is 
bound per fas et nefas, if possible, to clear him. 
If necessary for the accomplishment of that 
object, he is at liberty to accuse and defame the 
innocent, and even (as the report stated) to ruin 
his country. It is not unusual, especially in 
trials for murder, for the advocates of the accused 
to charge the crime on innocent parties and to 
exert all their ingenuity to convince the jury of 
their guilt." And Dr. Hodge adds the note 
that " Lord Brougham, according to the public 
papers, uttered these sentiments in vindication 
of the conduct of the famous Irish advocate 
Phillips, who on the trial of Courvoisier for the 
murder of Lord Russell, endeavored to fasten 
the guilt on the butler and housemaid, whom he 
knew to be innocent, as his client had confessed 
to him that he had committed the murder." 1 

1 Hodge's Systematic Theology, III., 439. 



208 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

Now the facts, in the two very different cases 
thus erroneously intermingled by Dr. Hodge, 
as given by Justice Sharswood, 1 present quite 
another aspect from that in which Dr. Hodge 
sees them, as bearing on the accepted ethics 
of the legal profession. It would appear that 
Lord Brougham was not speaking in defense of 
another attorney's action, but in defense of his 
own course as attorney of Queen Caroline, thirty 
years before the Courvoisier murder trial. As 
Justice Sharswood remarks of Lord Brougham's 
" extravagant " claims : " No doubt he was led 
by the excitement of so great an occasion to say 
what cool reflection and sober reason certainly 
never can approve." Yet Lord Brougham does 
not appear to have suggested, in his claim, that 
a lawyer had a right to falsify the facts involved, 
or to utter an untruth. He was speaking of his 
supposed duty to defend his client, the Queen, 
against the charges of the King, regardless of 
the consequences to himself or to his country 

1 Sharswood's Legal Ethics, p. 86 f. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 209 

through his advocacy ot ner cause, which he 
deemed a just one. 

And as to the charge against the eminent ad- 
vocate, Charles Phillips, of seeking to fasten the 
crime on the innocent, when he knew that his 
client was guilty, in the trial of Courvoisier for 
the murder of Lord Russell, that charge was 
overwhelmingly refuted by the testimony of 
lawyers and judges present at that trial. Mr. 
Phillips supposed his client an innocent man 
until the trial was nearly concluded. Then came 
the unexpected confession from the guilty man, 
accompanied by the demand that his counsel 
continue in his case to the end. At first Mr. 
Phillips proposed to retire at once from the case ; 
but, on advising with eminent counsel, he was told 
that it would be wrong for him to betray the 
prisoner's confidence, and practically to testify 
against him, by deserting him at that hour. He 
then continued in the case, but, as is shown con- 
clusively in his statement of the facts, with its 
accompanying proofs, without saying a word or 

1.4 



2IO A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

doing a thing that might properly be deemed in 
the realm of false assertion or intimations. 1 

The very prominence given in the public 
press to the charges against Mr. Phillips, and to 
their refutation, are added proof that the moral 
sense of the community is against falsehood un- 
der any circumstances or in any profession. 

Members of the legal profession are bound 
by the same ethical obligations as other men ; 
yet the civil law, in connection with which they 
practice their profession, is not in all points 
identical with the moral law ; although it is not 
in conflict with any of its particulars. As Chan- 
cellor Kent says : " Human laws are not so per- 
fect as the dictates of conscience, and the sphere 
of morality is more enlarged than the limits of 
civil jurisdiction. There are many duties that 
belong to the class of imperfect obligations, 
which are binding on conscience, but which 
human laws do not and cannot undertake directly 
to enforce. But when the aid of a Court of 

1 See Sharswood's Legal Ethics, pp. 103-107, 183-196. 



CENTURIES OE DISCUSSION. 2 1 1 

Equity is sought to carry into execution ... a 
contract, then the principles of ethics have a 
more extensive sway." 1 

In the decisions of Equity courts, while the 
duty of absolute truthfulness between parties in 
interest is insisted on as vital, and a suppression 
of the truth from one who had a right to its 
knowledge, or a suggestion of that which is 
untrue in a similar case (" suggestio falsi aut 
suppressio veri"), is deemed an element of fraud, 
the distinction between mere silence when one 
is entitled to be silent, and concealment with the 
purpose of deception, is distinctly recognized, as 
it is not in all manuals on ethics. 2 This is indi- 
cated, on the one hand, in the legal maxim 
Aliud est celare, aliud tacere y — "It is one thing 
to conceal, another to be silent ; " silence is not 
necessarily deceptive concealment ; 3 and on the 

1 Kent's Commentaries, Lect. 39, p. 490 f. (4th ed.) ; cited in 
Story's Equity Jurisprudence, VI., p. 229 (13th ed.). 

2 See Bispham's Principles of Equity, p. 261, 3d ed.) ; Broom's 
Legal Maxims, p. 781 f. (7th Am. ed.) ; Merrill's American and 
English Encyclopedia of Law, art. "Fraud." 

3 See Anderson's Dictionary of Law, p. 220 ; Abbott's Law Dic- 
tionary, I., 53. 



212 A LIE NE VER JUSTIFIABLE. 

other hand in such a statement as this, in 
Benjamin's great work on Sales : " The non- 
disclosure of hidden facts [to a party in interest] 
is the more objectionable when any artifice is 
employed to throw the buyer off his guard ; as 
by telling half the truth." 1 It is not in any 
principles which are recognized by the legal 
profession as binding on the conscience, that 
loose ethics are to find defense or support. 

But the profession that has most at stake in 
this discussion, and that, indeed, is most involved 
in its issue, is the ministerial, or clerical, pro- 
fession. While it was Jewish rabbis who affirmed 
most positively, in olden time, the unwavering 
obligations of truthfulness, it was Jewish rabbis, 
also, who sought to find extenuation or excuse 
for falsehoods uttered with a good intention. 
And while it was Christian Fathers, like the 
Shepherd of Hermas, and Justin Martyr, and 
Basil the Great, and Augustine, who insisted 
that no tolerance should be allowed to falsehood 

1 Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property, p. 451 f. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 2 1 3 

or deceit, it was also Christian Fathers, like 
Gregory of Nyssa, and Chrysostom, who having 
practiced deceit for what they deemed a good 
end, first attempted a special plea for such falsi- 
ties as they had found convenient in their pro- 
fessional labors. And it was other Christian 
Fathers, like Origen and Jerome, who sought to 
find arguments for laxity of practice, at this 
point, in the course of the Apostles themselves. 
All the way along the centuries, while the 
strongest defenders of the law of truthfulness 
have been found among clergymen, more has 
been written in favor of the lie of necessity by 
clergymen than by men of any other class or 
profession. And if it be true, as many of these 
have claimed, that deceit and falsehood are 
a duty, on the part of a God-loving teacher, 
toward those persons who, through weakness, or 
mental incapacity, or moral obliquity, are in the 
relation to him of wards of love, or of subjects 
of guardianship, there is no profession in which 
there is more of a call for godly deception, and 



214 A LIE NE VER JUS TIF I A BLE. 

for holy falsehood, than the Christian ministry. 
If it be true that a lie, or a falsehood, is justifi- 
able in order to the saving of the physical life 
of another, how much better were it to tell such 
a lie in the loving desire to save a soul. 

If the lie of necessity be allowable for any 
purpose, it would seem to be more important 
as a means of good in the exercise of the minis- 
terial profession, than of any other profession or 
occupation. And if it be understood that this 
is the case, what dependence can be put, by the 
average hearer, on the most earnest words of a 
preacher, who may be declaring a truth from 
God, and who, on the other hand, may be utter- 
ing falsehoods in love ? And if it be true, also, 
as some of these clergymen have claimed, that 
God specifically approved falsehood and decep- 
tion, according to the Bible record, and that 
Jesus Christ practiced in this line, while here on 
earth, what measure of confidence can fallible 
man place in the sacred text as it has come to 
him? The statement of this view of the case, is 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION, 2 1 5 

the best refutation of the claim of a possible 
justification for the most loving lie imaginable. 

The only other point remaining untouched, in 
this review of the centuries of discussion con- 
cerning the possible justifiableness of a lie under 
conceivable circumstances, is in its relation to 
the lower animals. It has been claimed that 
" all admit" that there is no impropriety in using 
any available means for the decoying of fish or of 
beasts to their death, or in saving one's self from 
an enraged animal ; hence that a lie is not to be 
counted as a sin per se, but depends for its moral 
value on the relation subsisting between its 
utterer and the one toward whom it is uttered. 

Dr. Dabney, who is far less clear and sound 
than Dr. Thornwell in his reasoning on this 
ethical question, says : " I presume that no man 
would feel himself guilty for deceiving a mad dog 
in order to destroy him;" 1 and he argues from 
this assumption that when a man, through insanity 
or malice, " is not a rational man, but a brute." 

1 Dabney's Theology (second edition), p. 425 f. 



2 1 6 A LIE NE VER JUSTIFIA BLE. 

he may fairly be deemed as outside of the pale 
of humanity, so far as the obligations of veracity, 
viewed only as a social virtue, are concerned. 

Dr. Newman Smyth expands this idea. 1 He 
says : " We may say that animals, strictly speak- 
ing, can have no immediate .right to our words 
of truth, since they belong below the line of exist- 
ence which marks the beginning of any functions 
of speech." He adds that animals " may have 
direct claims upon our humanity, and so indi- 
rectly put us under obligations to give them 
straightforward and fair treatment," and that 
" truthfulness to the domestic animal, to the 
horse or the dog, is to be included as a part of 
our general obligation of kindness to creatures 
that are entirely dependent upon our fidelity to 
them and their wants." But he cites the driving 
of horses with blinders, 2 and the fishing for trout 

1 Smyth's Christian Ethics, p. 398. 

2 Here is another illustration of Dr. Smyth's strange confusion 
of concealment with deception. It would seem as though a man 
must have blinders before his own eyes, to render him incapable 
of perceiving the difference between concealing a possible cause 
of fright from an animal, and intentionally deceiving that animal. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 21 7 

with artificial flies, as evidence of the fact that 
man recognizes no sinfulness in the deceiving 
of the lower animals, and hence that the duty of 
veracity is not one of universal obligation. 

If, indeed, the duty of truthfulness were only 
a social obligation, there might be a force in this 
reasoning that is lacking when we see that false- 
hood and deceit are against the very nature of 
God, and are a violation of man's primal nature. 
A lie is a sin, whenever and however and to 
whomsoever spoken or acted. It is a sin against 
God when uttered in his sight. 

Man is given authority from God over all the 
lower animals ; * and he is empowered to take 
their lives, if necessary for his protection or for 
his sustenance. In the exercise of this right, 
man is entitled to conceal from the animals he 
would kill or capture the means employed for 
the purpose; as he is entitled to conceal similarly 
from his fellowman, when he is authorized to 
kill him as an enemy, in time of war waged for 

1 Gen. 1 : 28 ; 9 : 1-3. 



2 1 8 A LIE NE VER JUSTIFIA BLE. 

God. Thus it is quite proper for a man to con- 
ceal the hook or the net from the fish, or the 
trap or the pitfall from the beast ; but it is not 
proper to deceive an animal by an imitation of 
the cry of the animal's offspring in order to lure 
that animal to its destruction ; and the moral 
sense of the human race makes this distinction. 
An illustration that has been put forward, as 
involving a nice question in the treatment of an 
animal, is that of going toward a loose horse 
with a proffered tuft of grass in one hand, and a 
halter for his capture concealed behind the back 
in the other hand. It is right to conceal the 
halter, and to proffer the grass, provided they are 
used severally in their proper relations. If the 
grass be held forth as an assurance of the readi- 
ness of the man to provide for the needs of the 
horse, and it be given to him when he comes 
for it, there is no deception practiced so far ; and 
if, when horse and man are thus on good terms, 
the man brings out the halter for its use in the 
relation of master and servitor between the two, 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 219 

that also is proper, and the horse would so 
understand it. But if the man were to refuse 
the grass to the horse, when the two had come 
together, and were to substitute for it the halter, 
the man would do wrong, and the horse would 
recognize the fact, and not be caught again in 
that way. 

Even a writer like Professor Bowne, who is 
not quite sure as to the right in all phases of the 
lying question, sees this point in its psychological 
aspects to better advantage than those ethical 
writers who would look at the duty of truthful- 
ness as mainly a social virtue : " Even in cases 
where we regard truth as in our own power," he 
says, " there are considerations of expediency 
which are by no means to be disregarded. 
There is first the psychological fact that inexact- 
ness of statement, exaggeration, unreality in 
speech, are sure to react upon the mental habit 
of the person himself, and upon the estimate in 
which his statements are held by others. In 
dealing with children, also, however convenient 



220 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

a romancing statement might momentarily be, 
it is unquestionable that exact truthfulness is 
the only way which does not lead to mischief. 
Even in dealing with animals, it pays in the long 
run to be truthful. The horse that is caught 
once by false pretenses will not be long in finding 
out the trick. The physician also who dissem- 
bles, quickly comes to lose the confidence of his 
patient, and has thereafter no way of getting 
himself believed." 1 

The main question is not whether it is fair 
toward an animal for a man to lie to him, but 
whether it is fair toward a man's self, or toward 
God the maker of animals and of men, for a 
man to lie to an animal. A lie has no place, 
even theoretically, in the universe, unless it be 
in some sphere where God has no cognizance 
and man has no individuality. 

It were useless to follow farther the ever-vary- 
ing changes of the never-varying reasonings for 

1 Bowne's Principles of Ethics, p. 224. 



CENTURIES OF DISCUSSION. 221 

the justification of the unjustifiable " lie of ne- 
cessity" in the course of the passing centuries. 
It is evident that the specious arguments put 
forth by young Chrysostom, in defense of his 
inexcusable lie of love fifteen centuries ago, have 
neither been added to nor improved on by any 
subsequent apologist of lying and deception. 
The action of Chrysostom is declared by his 
biographers to be " utterly at variance with the 
principles of truth and honor," one which "every 
sound Christian conscience must condemn ; " 
yet those modern ethical writers who find force 
and reasonableness in his now venerable though 
often-refuted fallacies, are sure that the moral 
sense of the race is with Chrysostom. 

Every man who recognizes the binding force 
of intuitions of a primal law of truthfulness, 
and who gives weight to a priori arguments for 
the unchanging opposition of truth and false- 
hood, either admits, in his discussion of this 
question, that a lie is never justifiable, or he is 
obviously illogical and inconsistent in his pro- 



222 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

cesses of reasoning, and in his conclusions. 
Even those who deny any a priori argument for 
the superiority of truthfulness over falsehood, 
and whose philosophy rests on the experimental 
evidence of the good or evil of a given course, 
are generally inclined to condemn any departure 
from strict truthfulness as in its tendencies detri- 
mental to the interests of society, aside from any 
question of its sinfulness. The only men who 
are thoroughly consistent in their arguments in 
favor of occasional lying, are those who start 
with the false premise that there is no higher 
law of ethics than that of such a love for one's 
neighbor as will make one ready to do whatever 
seems likely to advantage him in the present life. 
Centuries of discussion have only brought 
out with added clearness the essential fact that 
a lie is eternally opposed to the truth ; and that 
he who would be a worthy child of the Father 
of truth must refuse to employ, under any cir- 
cumstances, modes of speech and action which 
belong exclusively to the " father of lies." 



VII. 

THE GIST OF THE MATTER. 



It would seem that the one all-dividing line 
in the universe, which never changes or varies, is 
the line between the true and the false, between 
the truth and a lie. All other lines of distinc- 
tion, such even as those which separate good 
from evil, light from darkness, purity from im- 
purity, love from hate, are in a sense relative 
and variable lines, taking their decisive measure 
from this one primal and eternal dividing line. 

This is the one line which goes back of our 
very conception of a personal God, or which is 
inherent in that conception. We cannot con- 
ceive of God as God, unless we conceive of him 
as the true God, and the God of truth. If there 
be any falsity in him, he is not the true God. 

Truth is of God's very nature. To admit in 

223 



224 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

our thought that a lie is of God, is to admit that 
falsity is in him, or, in other words, that he is a 
false god. 

A lie is the opposite of truth, and a being who 
will lie stands opposed to God, who by his very 
nature cannot lie. Hence he who lies takes a 
stand, by that very act, in opposition to God. 
Therefore if it be necessary at any time to lie, it 
is necessary to desert God and be in hostility to 
him so long as the necessity for lying continues. 

If there be such a thing as a sin per se, a lie 
is that thing; as a lie is, in its very nature, in 
hostility to the being of God. Whatever, there- 
fore, be the temptation to lie, it is a temptation 
to sin by lying. Whatever be the seeming gain 
to result from a lie, it is the seeming gain from 
a sin. Whatever be the apparent cost or loss 
from refusing to lie, it is the apparent cost or 
loss from refusing to sin. 

Man, formed in the moral image of God, is so 
far a representative of God. If a man lies, he 
misrepresents and dishonors God, and must in- 



THE GIST OF THE MATTER. 225 

cur God's disapproval because of his course. 
This fact is recognized in the universal habit of 
appealing to God in witness of the truthfulness 
of a statement, when there is room for doubt 
as to its correctness. The feeling is general that 
a man who believes in God will not lie unto 
God under the solemnity of an oath. If, how- 
ever, it were possible for God to approve a 
lie on the part of one of his children, then that 
child of God might confidently make solemn 
oath to the truth of his lie, appealing to God to 
bear witness to the lie — which in God's mind is, 
in this case, better than the truth. In God's 
sight an oath is no more sacred than a yea, yea; 
and every child of God speaks always as in the 
sight of God. Perjury is no more of an im- 
morality than ordinary lying; nor is ordinary 
lying any less a sin than formal perjury. 

The sin of lying consists primarily and chiefly 
in its inconsistency with the nature of God and 
with the nature of God's image in man. It is 
not mainly as a sin against one's neighbor, but 

IS 



226 A LIE NEVER JUSTIFIABLE. 

it is as a sin against God and one's self, that a lie 
is ever and always a sin. If it were possible to 
lie without harming or offending one's neighbor, 
or even if it were possible to benefit one's fellow- 
man by a lie, no man could ever tell a lie, under 
any circumstances or for any purpose whatso- 
ever, without doing harm to his own nature, and 
offending against God's very being. If a lie 
comes out of a man on any inducement or provo- 
cation, or for any purpose of good, that man is 
the worse for it. The lie is evil, and its coming 
out of the man is harmful to him. "The things 
which proceed out of the man are those that 
defile the man," l said our Lord; and the experi- 
ence of mankind bears witness to the correctness 
of this asseveration. 

Yet, although the main sin and guilt and 
curse of a lie are ever on him who utters that 
lie, whatever be his motive in so doing, the evil 
consequences of lying are immeasurable in the 
community as a community ; and whoever is 

1 Mark 7 : 15. 



THE GIST OF THE MA TTER. 227 

guilty of a new lie adds to the burden of evil 
that weighs down society, and that tends to its 
disintegration and ruin. The bond of society is 
confidence. A lie is inconsistent with confi- 
dence; and the knowledge that a lie is, under 
certain circumstances, deemed proper by a man, 
throws doubt on all that that man says or does 
under any circumstances. No matter why or 
where the one opening for an allowable lie be 
made in the reservoir of public confidence, if it 
be made at all, the final emptying of that reser- 
voir is merely a question of time. 

To-day, as in all the days, the chief need of 
men, for themselves and for their fellows, is a 
likeness to God in the impossibility of lying ; 
and the chief longing of the community is for 
such confidence of men in one another as will 
give them assurance that they will not lie one 
to another. There was never yet a lie uttered 
which did not bring more of harm than of good ; 
nor will there ever be a harmless lie, while God 
is Truth, and Satan is the father of lies. 



INDEXES. 



TOPICAL INDEX. 



Abbe Sicard : cited, 203. 
Abbott, Benjamin V. : cited, 211. 
Abohab, Isaac : quotation from, 85 f. 
Abraham : his deceiving, 43. 
Achilles, truthfulness of, 22. 
Act and speech, lying in, 48. 
Advantages of lying, supposed, 71-73. 
Africans, truthfulness among, 29. 
Ahab's false prophets, 40-42. 
Ahriman, father of lies, 19. 
American Indians, habits of, 29. 
Ananias and Sapphira, 44. 
Anderson, Rasmus B. : cited, 18, 211. 
Animals, deception of, 62, 215-220. 
Aquinas, Thomas : cited, 108-110. 
Arabs, influence of civilization on, 29. 
Aristotle : cited, 23. 
Army prison life, incidents in, 2 f., 34. 
Augustine : cited, 97-110. 
Aurelius, Marcus : cited, 25. 

Bailey : cited, 31. 

Barrow, Sir John : cited, 29. 

Base-ball, concealment in, 191. 

Basil, friend of Chrysostom,94. 

Basil the Great : cited, 92. 

Baumgarten-Crusius : cited, 128. 

Benjamin, Judah P. : cited, 212. 

Bergk, Theodor : cited, 24. 

Bethlehem, Samuel at, 38-40, 147 f. 

Bheels, estimate of truth by, 28. 

Bible : principles, not rules, in, 33 ; 
first record of lie in, 34 ; story 
of man's " fall" in. 51 ; standard 
of right, 82 f. ; forbids lying, 116. 

Bible teachings on lying, 33-46. 

Bingham, Joseph : cited, 90-92. 

Bispham, George T. : cited, 211. 

Bock, Carl : cited, 30. 

Bowne, B. P., quotation from, 219 f. 

Boyle, F. : cited, 30. 

Brahmans, estimate of truth by, 10 f. 



Briggs and Salmond : cited, 163. 
Broom, Dr. Herbert : cited, 211. 
Brougham, Lord : cited, 207 f. 
Budge, E. A. : cited, 20 f. 
Bunsen, C. K. J. : cited, 20. 
Burton, Richard : cited, 30. 

Cecinna Psetus : cited, 199. 
Calvin, John : cited. 112. 
Carlyle, Thomas : cited, 185. 
Cartwright, William C. : cited, 113. 
Chastity, lying to save. 139. 
Children's right to truth, 125. 
Choosing between duties, 57 f. 
Christ, example of, 127, 131 f., 160 f. 
Christian ethics, basis of, 163. 
Christian Fathers, discussion by, 82. 
Christians, early, discussion by, 87-89. 
Chrysostom : cited, 94-97. 
Cicero : cited, 25, 192 f. 
Clergymen, position of, 213 f. 
Clive, Lord : cited, 194. 
Coleridge, S. T. : cited, 188. 
Concealment, justifiable, 50-54, 58-68, 

72-75, 78, 132, 190 f. , 197, 217 f. 
Concealment, unjustifiable, 48-51, 56, 

61-65, 68, 73, 77, 191. 
Confidence essential to society, 227.. 
Contract, overpressing theory of, 160. 
Conway, Moncure D. : cited, 13. 
Court, oath in, 49. 
Courvoisier, trial of, 209 f. 
Crime, lying to prevent, 77. 
Cyprian : cited, 90. 

Dabney, Dr. R. L. : cited, 190, 215 f. 

Darius, inscription of, 18. 

David : his deceiving, 44. 

" Deans, Jeanie," story of, 140. 

Deception : antagonistic to nature 

of God, 31 f., 106, 112, 224 f..; 

among Phoenicians, 32 ; by He- 

23I 



23 



TOPICAL INDEX. 



brew midwives, 35 f . ; 117, 147; 
by Rahab, 36-38, 101, 117; by 
Jacob, 36, 44 ; Samuel charged 
with, 38 -40, 147 f. ; Micaiah 
charged with, 40-42; by Abra- 
ham, 43 ; by Isaac, 44 ; by David, 
44 ; by Ananias and Sapphira, 
44 ; in speech and in act, 48 ; 
concealment not necessarily. 53 ; 
purposed and resultant, 56 ; of 
lower animals, 62, 215-220; in 
medical profession, 66-68, 71, 75 f., 
126, 196 f., 203 f., 220; of insane, 
71; in flag of truce, 72 ; teaching 
of Talmudistsasto,82 ; Peterand 
Paul charged with, 91 ; teaching 
of Jesuits, 112-115; of the in- 
toxicated, 125 ; Elisha charged 
with, 148 f . ; Joshua charged 
with, 190 f. ; in legal profession. 
204-212; in ministerial profession, 
213 f. 

Definitions of lie, 47-68, 116 f., 159, 176. 

Denham : cited, 29. 

De Wette : cited, 128. 

Dick, Dr., quotation from, 157 f. 

Dorner, Dr. Isaac A. : cited, 129-133. 

Drona, story of Yudhishthiraand, 11 f. 

Duns Scotus : cited, no f., 113. 

Duty : of truthfulness, 1-5, 9, 16, 18, 
26 f., 33-46, 67 f. ; of disclosure, 
conditional, 56 ; choosing of more 
important, 57 f. ; of right conceal- 
ment, 65, 77 f. ; to God not to be 
counted out, 79, 87 f. 

Dyaks : their truthfulness, 30. 

Earl, G. W. : cited, 31. 

Early Christians, temptations of, 89. 

East Africans, estimate of truth by, 29. 

Egyptian idea of deity synonymous 
with truth, 20 f. 

Elisha and Syrians, 149. 

Enemy, duty of truthfulness to, 1-5, 
87 f. 

Esau, deceit practiced on, 36. 

Eunomius : cited, 93. 

Evil as a means of good. 81 f. 

Exigency, lie of (see Lie of Neces- 
sity), 136-143. 

False impressions, limit of responsi- 
bility for, 64 f. 



Falsehood : estimate of, in India, 10- 
16 ; in Ceylon, 12 ; in Persia, 
18 f . ; in Egypt, 20; "Punic 
faith," synonym of, 32; in medi- 
cal profession, 66-68, 71, 75 f., 
126, 196 f., 203 f., 220; its use as 
means of good, 121 ; spoken in 
love, 138 ; in legal profession, 
204-212. 

Family troubles, concealment of, 65. 

Fichte : cited, 128, 185 f. 

Firmus, Bishop : cited, 103. 

Flag of truce, sending of, 72. 

Flatt : cited, 128. 

Forsyth, Capt. J. : cited, 27. 

Fowler, Professor : cited, 21 f., 25, 
32, 179-182. 

Frankness, brutal, 52. 

Fridthjof andlngeborg, story of,i6-i8. 

Fiirstenthal, R. J. : cited, 85. 

German ideal of truth, 25. 

Glasfurd : cited, 27. 

God : killing, but not lying, a possi- 
bility with, 6 ; cannot lie, 33-35, 
79 ; his concealments from man, 
63; is truth, 116,227; called to 
witness lie, 140. 

Greeks, ancient : their estimate of 
truth, 21-25. 

Gregory of Nyssa : cited, 92 f. 

" Hall of two truths," 20 f. 

Hamburger, Dr. I. : cited, 82-85. 

Hannibal : cited, 193. 

Harischandra, story of, 12-16. 

Harkness, Capt. Henry: cited, 28. 

Harless : cited, 128. 

Hartenstein : cited, 128. 

Heber, Bishop : cited. 28. 

Hebrew midwives. 35^,117, 147. 

Hebrew spies, 36-38, 101, 117. 

Hegel : cited, 129. 

Heralds' law, 192. 

Herbart : cited. 128. 

Hermas, Shepherd of: cited, 90, 107. 

Herodotus : cited, 22. 

Hill Tribes of India : their estimate of 
truth, 27-29. 

Hindoo: estimate of truth, n f. ; pas- 
sion-play, 12-16. 

Hodge, Dr. Charles : cited, 143-156, 
206 f . 



TOPICAL INDEX. 



233 



" Home of Song," 19. 
" Home of the Lie," 19. 
Hottentot, estimate of truth, 29. 
Hugo, Victor : cited, 202 f. 
Hunter, W. W. : cited, 29. 

Ilai, Rabbi : cited, 86. 

Iliad, estimate of truth in. 21-25. 

Indians, American, influence of civili- 
zation on, 29. 

Ingeborg and Fridthjof. story of, 
16-18. 

Innocent III. : cited, 115. 

Insane : lying to, 71 ; their right to 
truth, 125. 

Inscription of Darius, 18. 

Intoxicated, the : their right to truth, 
125. 

Isaac : his deceiving, 44. 

Isaac, Jacob, and Esau, 36. 

Ishmaei, Rabbi ; cited, 85 f. 

Jackson, Prof. A. V. W. : cited, 20. 
Jacob : his deceiving, 44 ; his lie to 

Isaac, 36. 
Jacobi, F. H. : cited, 186-188. 
Javanese : their truthfulness, 31. 
Jehoshaphat and Ahab, 40 f. 
Jehuda, Rabbi : cited, 86. 
Jerome : cited, 92, 105 f. 
Jesuits, teaching of, 112-115. 
Jewish Talmudists, discussions of, 82. 
Johnson's Cyclopsedia : cited, 133. 
Judith and Holofernes, 92. 
Justin Martyr : cited, 88 f. 
Juvenal : cited, 25. 

Kant, Immanuel : cited, 128, 176, 185. 

Keating, W. H. : cited, 29. 

Kent, Chancellor : cited, 210 f. 

Khonds of Central India, truthful- 
ness among, 27 f. 

Killing an enemy or lying to him, 4. 

Kirkbride, Dr. Thomas S., testimony 
of, 77. 

Kolben, P. : cited, 29. 

Krause : cited, 128. 

Kurtz, Prof. J. H. : cited, 111, 113, 
*zr, 133. 

Lamberton, Prof. W. A. : cited, 25. 
Lecky, W. E. H. : cited, 26. 
Legal profession, ethics of, 204-212. 



Legends, Scandinavian, 16. 

Liar : an enemy of righteousness, 20 ; 

form of prayer for, 80. 
Liars, place of, 19, 34. 
Libby Prison, incident of, 74. 
Lichtenberger, F. : cited, 121. 
Life, losing of truth to save, 77 f., 117. 
Life insurance, truthfulness in, 54. 
Lightfoot, Bishop : cited, 91. 
Liguori : cited, 115. 
Livingstone, David : cited, 29. 
Logic swayed by feeling, 134. 
Loyola, Ignatius : cited, 112 f. 
Luther, Martin : cited, 112. 

MA, symbol of Truth, 20. 

Macaulay, Lord, on Lord Clive's 
treachery, 194 f. 

Macpherson, Lieutenant : cited, 27. 

Mahabharata on lying, 11 f. 

Mahaffy, Prof. J. P. : cited, 21, 25. 

Mandingoes : their estimate of truth, 
29 f. 

Marcus Aurelius, quotation from, 25. 

Marheineke : cited. 128. 

Marriage, duty of truthfulness in con- 
nection with, 54. 

Marshman, Joshua : cited, 28. 

Martensen, Hans Lassen : cited, 112, 
133-143, 185, 188. 

Martineau, Dr. James, quotations 
from, 176-179. 

Martyrdom price of truth-telling, 88. 

Mead, Professor : cited, 130. 

Medical profession, no justifiable 
falsehood in, 196 f.. 203 f. 

Melanchthon : cited, 117. 

Me?zorath Hammaor, reference to, 85. 

Merrill, J. H. : cited, 211. 

Meyer, Dr. H. A. W. : cited, 127. 

Meyrick, Rev. F. : cited, 113, 115. 

Micaiah, story of, 40. 

Midwives, Hebrew, lies of, 35 f., 117, 

147- 

Mithra, god of truth, 20. 

Moore, William : cited, 93. 

Moral sense of man against lying, 71, 
184. 

Morgan : cited, 29. 

Muller, Julius : cited, 129. 

Miiller, Prof. Max : cited, 19 f. 

Murderer, concealment from would- 
be, 78. 



234 



TOPICAL INDEX. 



Nathan, Rabbi : cited, 86. 
Neander : cited, 92, 94. 
Nitzsch : cited, 126, 128. 

Oath of witness in court, 49. 
Omichund, deceit practiced on, 194. 
One all-dividing line, 223. 
Origen : cited, 90-92, 105. 107. 
Ormuzd, Zoroastrian god of truth, 19. 

Paley, Dr. : definition of lie, 159 f. 
Palgrave, W. G. : cited, 29. 
Paradise, two pictures of, 34. 
Park, Mungo : cited, 29. 
Pascal : cited, 113. 
Passion-play, Hindoo, 12-16. 
Patagonians : their view of lying, 29. 
Patient, deception of, by physician, 

66 f., 71, 75, 19 8 *"•> 2 °3 *"• 
Paul and Peter : suggestion of their 

deceiving, 91. 
Perjury justifiable, if lying be, 225. 
Persian ideals, 18. 
Peter and Paul : suggestion of their 

deceiving, 91. 
Phillips, Charles, misrepresented,2c>9 f. 
Philoctetes, tragedy of, 24. 
Phoenicians : their untruthfulness, 32. 
Physician, lying by,66f., 71, 75, 198 f., 

203 f. , 220. 
Pindar : cited, 24. 
Place of liars, 19, 34. 
Plato : cited, 22 f. 
Pliny the younger : cited, 199-202. 
Pope Innocent III. : cited, 115. 
Prayer, form of, for liar, 80. 
Principles, not rules, Bible standard, 

33- 

Priscillianists, sect of, 104. 

Prophets, lying, 41. 

Ptah, lord of truth, 20. 

" Punic faith," synonym of false- 
hood, 32. 

Pylades and Orestes, 188. 



Quaker and salesman. 69. 
" Quaker guns," concealment 
means of, 72. 

Ra, symbol of light, 20. 

Raba : cited. 84. 

Raffles, Sir T. S. : cited, 31. 



by 



Rahab the harlot, lying of, 36-38, 

101, 117. . 
Rawlinson, Prof. George : cited, 18. 
Reinhard : cited, 128. 
Responsibility, limit of, 56 f., 64 f. 
Robber: concealment from, 78; lying 

to, 152. 
Roberts, Joseph, quotation from, 10. 
Rock of Behistun, inscription on, 19. 
Roman Catholic writers, views of, 

112-115. 
Roman matron, story of: cited by 

Pliny, 199-202. 
Roman standard of truthfulness, 21. 
Rothe, Richard : cited, 120-129. 

St. John, Sir Spencer : cited, 31. 

Samuel at Bethlehem, 38-40. 

Sapphira : her deceiving, 44. 

Satan, "father of lies," 34, 227. 

Sayce, Prof. A. H. : cited, 19. 

Scandinavian legends, 16. 

Schaff, Dr. Philip : cited, 95 f., 129. 

Schaff-Herzog : cited, 133. 

Schleiermacher : cited, 128 f. 

Schoolcraft, H. R. : cited, 29. 

Schwartz : cited, 128. 

Scott, Sir Walter: cited, 140 f. 

Self-deception in others, limit of re- 
sponsibility for, 58 f. 

Semple, J. W. : cited, 185. 

Sharswood, Chief - Justice : cited, 
205 f. , 208. 

Shepherd of Hermas, quotation from, 
90 f., 107. 

Sherwill : cited, 27. 

Shortt, Dr. J. : cited, 28. 

Sick: their right to truth, 125. 

Simplice, Sister, story of, 202 f. 

Sin per se, lying, 7, 70, 79, 217, 224 f. 

Smith and Cheetham : cited, 90. 

Smith and Wace : cited, 94,97. io 4- 

Smyth, Dr. Newman : cited, 163-175, 
201, 216 f. 

Sonthals. truthfulness among, 27. 

South, Dr. Robert: cited, 160. 

Sowrahs, truthfulness among, 28. 

Speech and act, lying in, 48. 

Spencer, Herbert : cited, 27-31, 40. 

Spies, Hebrew, Rahab and, 36-38, 
101, 117. 

Spy denied soldier's death, 72. 

Stephen, Leslie: cited, 182-184. 



TOPICAL INDEX. 



235 



Story, Justice : cited, 211. 
Surgeon's responsibility for his action, 

56 ; testimony as to deceiving 

patient, 198 f. 
Symonds, J. A. : cited, 113. 
Syrians, Elisha and, 149. 

Talmud, teachings of, 83-85. 

Talmudists, discussion among, 82. 

Taylor, Jeremy : cited, 115-120. 

Teaching of Jesuits, 112-115. _ 

Temptations influencing decision, 2. 

Tertullian : cited, 90. 

Theognis : cited, 23 f. 

Thornwell, Dr. James H. : cited, 
143 f., 156-162. 

Tipperahs : their habit of lying, 29. 

Todas, truthfulness among, 27 f. 

Tragedy of Philoctetes, 24. 

Truce, flag of, use of, 72. 

Truth : universal duty of telling, 1-5, 
9, 16,83, 87 f-, 125, 162, 171, 190 f., 
196, 217, 220 ; God is, 33-35>. Il6 » 
145, 227 ; not every one entitled 
to full, 52, 64-66 ; dearer than 
life, 77 f., 117, 138 f. ; justifiable 
concealment of, 50-54, 58-68, 72- 

75,. 77 f-, 125.. 132, 190 f., 197, 
217 f. ; unjustifiable concealment 
of, 48-51, 56, 61-65, 68, 71, 73,191. 
Truth, estimate of : among Hindoos, 
10-12 ; among Scandinavians, 
16-18 ; in ancient Persia, 18 f. ; 
in ancient Egypt, 20 ; among 
Romans, 21 ; among ancient 
Greeks, 21-25 ; among ancient 
Germans, 25 ; among Hill Tribes 
of India, 27-29 ; among Arabs, 
29 ; among American Indians, 
29 ; among Patagonians, 29 ; 
among Africans, 29 f. ; among 



Dyaks, 30 ; among Veddahs, 31 ; 
among Javanese, 31. 

Ueberweg, F. : cited, 111. 
Ulysses, reference to, 24 f. 
Urim and Thummim, 20. 

Veddahs of Ceylon : their truthful- 
ness, 31. 

Veracity: duty of, 1-5,9, x ^> 83, 87 f., 
125, 162, 171, 190 f., 196, 217, 
220; of Greeks, 21; of Persians, 
22 ; of primitive and civilized 
peoples compared, 26 f. ; of Hill 
Tribes of India, 27-29 ; of Arabs, 
29 ; of American Indians, 29 ; of 
Africans, 29 ; of Dyaks, 30 ; of 
Veddahs, 31 ; of Javanese, 31. 

Viswamitra and Indra, story of, 12-16. 

Von Ammon : cited, 128. 

Von Hirscher : cited, 128. 

Walker, Helen, example of, 141. 
War: justifiable concealment in, 72, 

132 ; duty of veracity in, 190 f., 

196. 
Westcott, Bishop : cited, 127. 
Wheeler, J. Talboys : cited, 12, 28. 
Whewell, Dr. William : cited, 204 f. 
"White lie," 131, 203. 
Wig, concealment by, 62 f. 
Wilkinson, Sir J. G. : cited, 20. 
Witness, oath of, in court, 49. 
W^oolsey, President : cited, 195. 
Wuttke, Dr. Adolf: cited, 111, 129. 

Yudhishthira and Drona, mythical 
story of, 11 f. 

Zoroastrian designation of heaven 
and hell, 19 f. 



SCRIPTURAL INDEX. 



GENESIS 


i : 28 ... . 


2 and 3 . 






3 : 6, 7 • • 






9:1-3. . 






12 : 10-19 . 






12 : 14-20 . 
16 : 1-6 . . 






25 : 27-34 • 

26 : 6-10 . 






27 : 1-40 . 






27 : 6-29 . 

28 : 1-22 . 







39 : 8-21 



PAGE 
217 

34 

5i 

217 

43 
112 



EXODUS. 



15-19 
15-21 
19,20 
20, 21 



43 
36 
44 

36 

44 
36 
20 I 



35 
112 

*47 

36 



LEVITICUS. 

8:8 20 

18:5 85 

19 : 2, 12, 13, 34-37 83 

19 • « 45 

NUMBERS. 

23 : *9 34 

DEUTERONOMY. 

29 : 29 50 



JOSHUA. 



2 : 1-21 

8 : 1-26 

24 : 3 . . 



36 
190 

43 



1 SAMUEL. 

TEXT PAGE 



15-17 
22-24 

14,15 



13 : 14 
15 : 29 



16 : 1-3 
20 : 29 



21 : 1, 2 



2 SAMUEL. 
1-27 .... 



39 
39 
39 
44 
34 
147 
38 
39 
44 



44 



KINGS. 



22 : 1-23 . . . . 
2 KINGS. 



6 : 14-20 

7:6. . 

20 : 12-19 



31 

58 
62 



40 



148 

191 

52 



2 CHRONICLES. 



i-34 
7 • • 



PSALMS. 



63 : 11 
101 : 7 
116 : 11 
120 : 2 

146 : 6 



34 

45 
45 
45 
46 

9 

46 

34 



PROVERBS. 

TEXT PAGE 

6 : 16,17 45 

14 : 5 45 

19 : 5, 9, 22 ... . 45 

ISAIAH. 

41 : 8 43 

51 : 2 43 

MATTHEW. 

3:9 43 

MARK. 

6 : 48 150 

7 : 15 226 

LUKE. 

24 : 28 ... . 150, 151 

JOHN. 

7:8 127 

8 : 44 34 

14 : 6 34 

16 : 12 51 

ACTS. 

5 : i-« 44 

13 : 22 44 

ROMANS. 

3:4 35 

3 : 7, 8 95 

4 : 12 43 

236 



SCRIPTURAL INDEX. 



237 



GALATIANS. 

TEXT PAGE 

2 : 11-14 91 

3:9 43 

EPHESIANS. 
4 : 25 46 

COLOSSIANS. 
3:9 46 



TITUS. • 

TEXT PAGE 

1:2 34 



HEBREWS. 

6 : 18 

11 : 31 



JAMES. 



2 : 23 



7,34 
37 



43 



1 JOHN. 

TEXT PAGE 

5:7 34 



REVELATION. 



21 : 5- 

22 . 



34 
34 



